“He put me on the spot,” explains Aslie Pitter MBE. “‘Why are you playing in a gay tournament,’ he asked. I confessed: I’m gay. It just went quiet.
“At that time I was playing in the club's first team. But the guys weren’t comfortable playing alongside me after that, so I got dropped right down to the fourth team. It was a very dark time. And this was 1994.”
The problem was that life for Aslie Pitter wasn’t supposed to include football in the first place. Or, more accurately, football wasn't supposed to include him.