The match was postponed. Pride was not: Inside Keighley Cougars’ day of heartbreak and defiance

Over the past couple of years, some of us at Attitude have become regulars at Cougar Park. Last year, we even made it into the players’ changing room for a shoot in issue 366. It was a memorable afternoon for all involved.

On Sunday 12 July, we found ourselves back up north for the club’s annual Pride fixture, taking in the hospitality of the owners’ lounge over roast dinner and crisp white wine. Once again, Cougar Park was gearing up to become something bigger than a run-of-the-mill rugby league ground. It is a stadium, yes, but one that wears a vital declaration: everyone is welcome here. You may have been picked last at school; do not let that put you off this beautiful game.

A small migration of Attitude family and queer glitterati minced through the gates at lunchtime, including two of the ‘Leaders of the Pack’ from Attitude’s Pride in London parade contingent, Tess Tickle and Emma Royd, alongside Harvey Rose, Alexis and Liam Blake, broadcaster and club patron India Willoughby, and members of the wider community. They have come to understand that Pride at Keighley is not decorative programming around a sporting event. It is woven into the club’s identity.

At the centre of it all were PEUGEOT Attitude PRIDE Award winners Ryan O’Neill and Kaue Garcia: the husbands who rescued Keighley Cougars from collapse in 2019 and rebuilt it as one of Britain’s most proudly LGBTQ+-inclusive sporting organisations. Since taking ownership, they have established the club’s annual Pride fixtures, welcomed drag performers into rugby league and placed the Progress Pride flag on the team’s kit.

This was meant to be a celebration of everything they had built. Instead, the men’s first-team fixture against Dewsbury Rams never kicked off.

A pitch too hard to play on

Following a spell of intense heat across the UK, Cougar Park’s playing surface was judged too hard to be safe. The Betfred Championship match, scheduled to kick off at 3pm, was postponed after a pre-match inspection. Keighley’s women’s side had completed its fixture against Oldham on the same surface earlier that day.

Safety must come first. Nobody at Keighley, and certainly nobody writing this, would argue that players should be put at risk for the sake of completing a fixture. A Pride match is not made more meaningful by somebody leaving it injured.

Emotions ran high as fiercely loyal Keighley Cougars supporters tried to make sense of how the afternoon had unravelled. The precise sequence of decisions is for the clubs and the Rugby Football League to resolve; this piece will not speculate beyond what can be established. What was unmistakable, however, was the instinct to close ranks around Kaue and Ryan, the Cougars and the community the club serves — a fierce, improbable solidarity familiar from Stephen Beresford’s 2014 film Pride.

This was never just another fixture

Keighley’s Pride match is not a piece of corporate rainbow branding erected for a weekend and packed away once the photographs have been taken.

The club held its first Pride fixture shortly after Ryan and Kaue took over in 2019. Drag performers appeared on the pitch, players wore a specially designed kit and more than 2,000 people attended. In 2021, the Cougars became the first professional sporting team to incorporate the Progress Pride flag into its playing kit. The club has continued to use its fixtures and physical space to champion LGBTQ+ inclusion, with particular and unwavering support for trans people.

That commitment has come at a cost.

Ryan and Kaue have faced years of homophobic and transphobic abuse. They have said that sponsors disappeared when the Pride flags first went up, and their appointment of India Willoughby as the first trans patron of a professional sports club drew another wave of public hostility. They have also spoken openly about death threats, relentless online attacks and the effect that constant abuse has had on their mental health.

Only weeks ago, they announced that they had reached their limit. Exhausted by the abuse and the financial pressure of keeping the club alive, they said they intended to step away at the end of the season.

Then Keighley answered.

Supporters covered the ground with banners. Fans drove to the couple’s home with flowers and stayed drinking Prosecco with them into the early hours. LGBTQ+ people wrote to explain what the rainbow sign at Cougar Park — and the promise that everyone would remain welcome beneath it — meant to them.

Ryan and Kaue reversed their decision.

“The haters lost,” Kaue told Attitude at the time. “We won’t let hate win.”

Sunday was meant to be the joyous next chapter in that story.

And then the drag queens started scrumming

One might imagine the afternoon ending with an empty pitch and a journey home. It did not.

Because while the main fixture had been postponed, there remained several drag performers in full splendour, one very patient rugby coach and a perfectly serviceable stretch of grass upon which to make alternative sporting history.

Under the instruction of Keighley Foundation and community manager Jonny Storton, Tess Tickle, Emma Royd, Harvey Rose and influencer Alexis Blake began their first rugby league training session.

There was passing. There was scrumming. There were some extremely ambitious interpretations of athletic stance.

There was also the discovery that Tess Tickle can kick a rugby ball with alarming competence. Who knew?

What began as an attempt to lift the mood became something more meaningful. The same pitch that had become the setting for disappointment was reclaimed through laughter. People who had arrived expecting to watch rugby began learning how to play it. The glitterati were suddenly studying technique, taking instruction and throwing themselves into the sport — heels and all.

So the show went on. It formed a scrum, took possession of the pitch and revealed something essential about this community.

Our joy is not proof that nothing hurts us. Often, it is how we survive the things that do.

Ryan and Kaue have spent seven years proving that LGBTQ+ visibility and professional sport do not merely coexist. They can strengthen one another. They can bring new people through the gates, challenge inherited prejudices and turn a rugby ground into a refuge for somebody who may not feel safe anywhere else.

That is why they are Attitude Pride Award winners.

Any outstanding questions over the postponement are now for the clubs and the Rugby Football League. In the meantime, one fact remains beyond dispute.

The match was postponed. Pride was not.

At Cougar Park, it never will be.