Andi Page, co-founder of the Mersey Roses has revealed the homophobic and transphobic abuse the team have received.
Mersey Roses Recreational are an all-inclusive cricket team and were founded in November last year.
Andi, also captain of the hardball team spoke out on the abuse the team received on social media.
“Some of us have been dealing with homophobia most of our lives.
“When you set something up that is unashamedly LGBT inclusive, you do expect a little bit of a backlash.
“The Transphobic stuff was way way way nastier. It was beyond what was acceptable. We we’re getting a whole series of shocking memes and comments.”
The abuse started when the Mersey Roses media team put a recruitment ad on Facebook advertised as disability and LGBTQIA+ friendly.
The post received hundreds of homophobic and transphobic replies.
Andi, alongside fellow co-founder, Steve Fowle deleted all the comments they found, but the abuse got worse.
Mersey Roses suffering personal threats
The Mersey Roses team decided to report the abuse to the police as they feared for their safety.
“We know where you play, we know where you train, we’re going to come and target you. That’s when we had to go to the police.
“There was a lot of stuff going on, but it was really nasty and personal and they really threatened to target us. Now, whether that’s serious or not, we didn’t know.”
The wave of abuse has stopped on social media, but that hasn’t stopped the ‘low level’ comments on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
“No cricket club should have to be subjected to the fear that people may protest outside their training ground.
Or worse still, we didn’t know exactly what they meant by the sinister threats, whether there’ll be more than a protest or whether they may actually physically harm some of our teammates.”
Inspired by the example of the Birmingham Unicorns, the Mersey Roses formed an LGBTQIA+ team.
The team are all-inclusive and strive for inclusion in areas such as disability, age, ethnicity, social background and neurodiversity.
