Local LGBTI+ rugby club Perth Rams are celebrating a year of queer sport with a birthday bash this weekend.

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Club President Mitch Wylie stopped by RTRFM’s All Things Queer program this week to talk about what the club has achieved in their first 12 months, what’s coming next and invite us to celebrate with them this Saturday night.

Wylie explains that just the club formed after conversations between a few friends playing touch rugby.

“There’d been discussions with one of them whose a member of the Ottawa Wolves, who are hosting the Bingham Cup in 2020, and he was very keen to be playing Rugby Union again. He really missed the contact aspect of rugby that he was missing out on in touch, and he planted the seed and started talking and getting the ideas going,” Wylie said.

“It wasn’t until John Deptford, who was a founder of the Liverpool Tritons in the UK, he moved over to Perth in March/April last year so I sat down with him and he was keen to get a club going here.”

“By this time I already had a few people in my head saying ‘we should do it’… so we met with Rugby WA, we met with the President of the Curtin Goats at the time, and said ‘Hey, this is what we want to do.'”

Wylie explains that the club received much-welcome support from the International Gay Rugby organisation, which really gave the Rams a kick start.

“There’s an overarching community that we’re a part of from day one, and we’ve had a lot of support from our Australian clubs as well. We went over to Melbourne last year to play the Melbourne Chargers as our first International Gay Rugby event. That was all set up from day one, there was always things to aspire to and something for us to be working towards.”

“Here we are now 12 months later, not really sure how we got here… it took off really quickly!”

This Saturday night the Rams will be celebrating at Connections Nightclub with the team, Fay Rocious and special performances from Perth Bears on the Rams team.

“We’ve got a big night planned with local drag queens putting on performances, we’ve got competitions, prizes, a few of our boys will be there with their shirts off… and in some speedos!”

Perth Rams 1st Birthday Celebration is at Connections Nightclub this Saturday 4th May from 8:30pm. Tickets and more information available here. 

You can re-stream and listen to the full conversation on All Things Queer with Perth Rams President Mitch Wylie over at RTRFM 92.1.

Leigh Andrew Hill