After Mianne Bagger, another TG makes a giant leap in sports
From Slam Sports
HOBART, Tasmania (AP) - Transsexual Martine Delaney has been cleared to play in a women's soccer league in Australia.
Football Federation Australia said it didn't know of any precedents in Australian soccer and Delaney also thinks it's a first, perhaps for the world.
Delaney, 47, was given the OK this week to continue playing in a women's league based in the state capital of Hobart by Soccer Tasmania.
Australian soccer officials didn't have a specific policy regarding transsexual players but advised Tasmanian state authorities that if legally she was classified female, Delaney qualified for the women's competition under guidelines adopted from the International Olympic Committee.
Delaney played for 25 years in men's leagues in Australia's southern island state of Tasmania and conceded to being widely known within soccer circles for being "a bit outlandish" and having long flowing hair.
Following male-to-female gender reassignment surgery just over two years ago, Delaney was tentative about returning to the soccer pitch.
She did so in recent months, at the insistence of some friends, and scored a half-dozen goals for Claremont United in the women's division before supporters of a rival club discovered Delaney's previous registration - as Martin Delaney - and asked the state association for clarification on her registration.
Soccer Tasmania chief executive Martin Shaw gave the OK, saying state laws and the FFA's rules prohibited discrimination in Delaney's case.
"I think our decision is in line with the prevailing attitudes in sport, in the IOC, and the case with Mianne Bagger in women's golf," said Shaw. "We got a request for clarification from another club - they were informed (Wednesday) of our decision and they'll abide by it."
The issue has given soccer a higher level of exposure in Tasmania, including front-page articles in Hobart's Mercury daily newspaper.
"We're on the front page, and that doesn't happen for women's soccer around here," Shaw said. "Most people will understand the decision that's been made and are comfortable with it."
Delaney has been surprised by the level of interest from the media and people in the street.
"It's not the primary reason I decided to play, but it's given transgender issues some profile - for sure," Delaney said in a telephone interview. "I've had some wonderful reactions. An elderly lady recognized me and walked up to me, grabbed my arm and told me: 'Congratulations, you've done a good thing - go for it, girl!"'
Delaney works in a counselling agency for homosexual and transgender people in Hobart. She said she'd heard of Mianne Bagger, the Danish-born Australian resident who made international headlines earlier this year by forcing the European and Australasian women's golf tours to change their "male by birth" qualification criteria.
But Bagger wasn't the inspiration for Delaney's soccer comeback.
"My decision was threefold, I suppose: I had a lifelong love of soccer and wanted to get back; I had some heart problems a few years back and my doctor told me I needed more exercise; and I thought it might make a difference."
Delaney has been a human rights activist for many years and has a profile in Tasmania, "so I was fully aware that if I started playing women's soccer, it might spark more than a ripple of interest."
Unfortunately, Delaney said, stories like hers still get "freak show" connotations because of a lack of understanding in the wider community.
"It's pretty sad, actually, that the discrimination a transsexual person potentially faces on the sports field is of major interest, yet there's so much more discrimination and problems these people face every day of their lives that doesn't rate a mention, ever," she said.
". . . if there's one thing I can do with a little bit of profile like this, it's raise some awareness."
