Most pro football players would welcome a gay teammate and some say the first soccer star to come out would make a fortune.

A poll of professional soccer players in the UK has found 62% believe an openly gay footballer would not be outcast.

Commissioned by sporting mag FourFourTwo, they asked 100 professional players across the leagues anonymously about issues in football such as racism, drugs, and depression.

Welsh gay rugby star Gareth Thomas will be slipping on his sequins for Britain's reality show Dancing on Ice.

Some of the contestants joining the rugby player will be Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, actress Samia Ghadie and X Factor winner Shane Ward.

Thomas has recently spoken out about a report which states gay students find it difficult to get into sport at university.

The 38-year-old said: 'Attitudes have changed and the time is right for sport to start accepting openly gay people in the same way other areas of society have in recent years.'

Rugby superstar Ben Cohen is collaborating with The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to encourage everyone to come out and stand up for LGBT equality.

The duo will be selling 1,000 T-shirts in aid of National Coming Out Day, the globally celebrated event encouraging LGBT people and their straight supporters to live honest lives, which is celebrated every 11 October.

Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she is backing a bid for the country to hold a gay rugby world cup contest.

The Sydney Convicts, a rugby club whose members are mostly gay men, will this week submit their bid to host the Bingham Cup in 2014.

'Australia is a sports-loving nation which also has an abiding commitment to diversity and mutual respect,' said Gillard, who has been criticized for her refusal to back gay marriage proposals.

Openly gay former Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas says that being closeted made him so depressed he wanted to fall off a cliff.

The ex rugby union international star was speaking at an event in London for Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), the global professional services firm, and their clients and contacts yesterday evening (5 September).

It was organized by GLEE, PwC’s ‘gay, lesbian and everyone else’ networking group.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron showed his support for rugby legend and gay rights champion Ben Cohen at an LGBT Downing Street reception.

Cohen proudly tweeted a photo of himself with his arm around the Conservative leader yesterday (25 July).

The pair held a t-shirt with the logo of his anti-bullying charity the StandUp Foundation, which Cohen tweeted had been given the thumbs up by the PM.

The New York Gotham Knights are preparing to defend their gay rugby world title this weekend as Manchester hosts the Bingham Cup.

In total 39 clubs from 15 countries will be represented at the tournament in Manchester, north west England which is being supported by the country’s Rugby Football Union.

The gay capital of the north is preparing to host over 1,500 players and spectators from Amsterdam, Dublin, Ottawa, Stockholm, Sydney and beyond.

Shoving my face between another man’s buttocks isn’t usually part of my workout regime, but in rugby, happily, it’s a requirement.

As a weedy, asthmatic teenager, my school-day experiences of playing the sport were less titillating and mostly involved shivering in the drizzle, dragged face first through the mud or being crushed beneath a heap of burly adolescents with below par personal hygiene habits.