The story, set in Brighton in 1957, follows a policeman named Tom Burgess who is gay, but living in a society where it’s illegal to be so. “It was kind of like my coming-out book,” he says. While in Leeds, someone gave him a copy of My Policeman, a 2012 romance novel by Bethan Roberts. I was thinking about regrets and where I would be in 10, 20, 30 years.” “I was very much struggling with who I was. The only person I knew about was Justin Fashanu, and he killed himself,” Rogers says now, reflecting back on that time. “My experience in sports was that you can’t be gay.
But he was keeping his personal life-and the fact that he was gay-a secret.
Robbie Rogers had finally reached his boyhood dream of playing professional soccer, first as a part of Columbus Crew in Ohio and then later as a member of the English soccer team Leeds United.
