#doncaster rovers

[louisupdates]

drfcofficial (Doncaster Rovers) via IG story [11.8.2024]

Louis Tomlinson wearing a Doncaster Rovers flag at SZIGET FESTIVAL, 📸 Joshua Halling

[sunshineandlyrics]

☺️📸 This is the POV of the "girl in the Donny shirt" taking the pic of Louis and his team. You can hear Joshua checking how she is and teaching her how to take the group pic, and Louis just waffling in the background.

💚🤍❤️ FITFWT Guadalajara, 6 June 2024.

What happened on stage from the crowd's POV X

[elceeu2morrow]

[4.27.24]

[dailytomlinson]

Louis giving his prediction of the score of tonight's Euros finals on the dms of Doncaster Rovers' instagram - 13.07

[srldesigns6277]

Louis wearing the Doncaster Rovers Flag at Sziget Festival

[chelseajackarmy]

[dreamings-free]

27/4/24

[har-rystyles]

louis tomlinson - 19.04.15

[awesomefringey]

😭😭

I love revisiting these interview moments! Be still my Zouis heart!!! 🥺

[bidamonalbarn]

see you saturday 😭

[tangerinequeen19]

Louis Tomlinson being two scoops of adorable (full gifset)

[louisupdates]

Louis Tomlinson, SZIGET FESTIVAL 2024 [10.8.2024] 📸 Joshua Halling

[sunshineandlyrics]

Hello Stadium owner Louis Tomlinson

[louiswearbook]

Louis Tomlinson arriving in Brisbane | 29 January 2024

—

Vintage Doncaster Rovers Crewneck

N/A

Martine Rose Panelled Track Pants

€590 | £447 | $485

Salomon Advanced XT-6 Sneakers in White/White/Lunar Rock

€180 | £165 | $200

Ray-Ban Hexagonal Flat Lenses in Gold/Green

€155 | £147 | $171

[wishingicouldfly]

Debunking that Louis came out to the Rovers in August 2013 - posted January 11, 2023

I don't necessarily want to rehash old stuff, but I've seen a few people talking about this recently and it came up in one of my group chats this morning. I like context and I like to debunk things that aren't true about the boys.

This morning in one of my group chats someone brought up an OLD OLD OLD question. The story goes that in 2013, when Louis was signing on to the Doncaster Rovers as part of the reserve team for a charity gig, some of his football teammates congratulated him for being one of the UK’s first openly gay footballers. There are tweets that purportedly support this story.

It didn’t make sense to me that in 2013, Louis was coming out publicly to anyone in a group setting, and I had a bit of time, so decided to go down the rabbit hole a bit to find out more.

If you weren’t aware, a bit later in 2014, Louis tried to buy into the team. One Direction's Louis Tomlinson buys Doncaster Rovers | Doncaster Rovers | The Guardian

Disclaimer. I wasn’t here then. So, someone knows more than me for sure. Let me know if you remember something different or if you were here and can clarify, or if you know of anyone who has a master post about it.

Adding a cut.

Here's what started my research. This is a screen shot from someone claiming that Louis came out to his Rovers Teammates and that some of them congratulated him, mentioning that he was the first openly gay UK footballer, and then immediately deleted their tweets.

This screen shot is blurry but it’s what we started with. The poster states that Louis came out to his teammates through a loophole.

Through some searching, I was able to find someone with a better screen shot. Credit to Twitter user @/babyhykeem. You can see better here that these tweets existed. In August 2013, people were repeating the idea that Louis was the first openly gay UK footballer.

My original theory that they were faked or manips seems false. The tweets happened. Some of those users are still there and if you put "Louis Tomlinson first gay footballer" into the Twitter search bar you'll get a bunch of hits/reactions from August 3, 2013, so it happened.

Here's the thing. Just because something happened doesn't make all of it true. It doesn't make any sense that in 2013, at the height of 1D popularity, that Louis would in any way publicly announce his sexuality. Gay rumors were rampant, but no one was confirming anything.

One of my chat members (thanks, @/DawnieP12 on Twitter) looked at the team roster from 2013-2014. Louis was listed as #28, but none of those other names in that screen shot are listed. So these people were not teammates.

A bit more searching, and I found these screenshots of Tweets from a person called @/Ryan67_ (thanks to Twitter user @/monnbenn for the screenshots).

This looks like ground zero to me. On 8/1/13, this kid posts the "inadvertently came out" post that got picked up by all the other accounts. He was a player on one of the youth leagues and someone told him that L had come out. It was a rumor/gossip and the kid posted it. Maybe innocently. Maybe he made it up. We don't know. Maybe he believed something he was told. It's important to note that he never claimed to witness it himself.

There are allusions to these tweets on Tumblr and Twitter from the time as well as in football chat groups (some of them are super homophobic). But nothing that I can find from actual players to whom he supposedly came out.

My final analysis: The Tweets about Louis coming out to the team and being the first openly gay footballer WERE real, but they were not made by teammates, coworkers or colleagues, only propagated by people (possibly shading, you decide based on their tone) sharing a rumor/gossip started by a kid who was playing on the youth team and was given false information.

Some of the reactions seem well intentioned and honestly congratulatory, while some seem homophobic and mean spirited. Regardless, they all are feeding off something that was very likely false to begin with.

I'm not making any statements about how Louis identifies his sexuality either now or in 2013, just that I don't believe he came out to the team, or that any of the team made statements about his sexuality publicly.

If someone has a memory of this or knows something more, please don't hesitate to let me know here or on Twitter @Rosann_1986.

As always, there's always a chance I'm wrong, and I will willingly admit being wrong should alternative information become available.

[zot3-flopped]

Just something that came back to mind, another Tomlinson flop back in the days (if he really cared that much, didn't he have enough money to do it without asking for money to others?)

www theguardian com/football/2014/jul/18/one-direction-louis-tomlinson-misled-doncaster-takeover-john-ryan

Yes, Louis could easily have afforded to give the club the extra £1.3m they needed - so why didn't he? Did he really expect his fans to fund it all? What a joke.