Luke Ayling delights Leeds United fans with 'game-changing' Leeds Pride appearance

That’s the belief of Stephen Wignal, chair of the Leeds United LGBT+ supporters group, Marching Out Together.

On Sunday, Ayling became the first active Premier League football player to attend a Pride event when he joined in the march through Leeds city centre.

Every year 50,000 people take to the streets of Leeds in protest and celebration and this summer, Ayling was among them, as well as former United players Jermaine Beckford and Noel Whelan.

With Ayling currently out of action for the Whites as he recovers from knee surgery, Wignal is blown away by the scale of his impact off the pitch.

"I think it's massive,” Wignal told the Mirror.

"You can't be what you can't see, so if you're a young LGBT+ person and there's no active gay players and you don't see people like Luke on the march with us, you don't have anyone to look up to.”

"There are out gay athletes out there, but if your thing's football and you have no-one you can look up to, the you almost don't have anyone you can look up to and idolise.

"Luke is straight, identifies as straight, but he has actively shown his support to us and shown that being gay is not an issue, it's not a problem.”

The past year has seen unprecedented advances in LGBT+ representation in football, as A-League star Josh Cavallo became the only top-flight player to coming out as gay before Blackpool striker Jake Daniels became the first UK professional footballer in more than 20 years to make his homosexuality public.

Wignal hopes that Ayling’s history-making appearance will have a wider impact going forward.

"I was chatting to Luke on the march and he was like, 'the lads would love this' talking about how he'd had a good time and we were like 'well, make sure you speak to them and get them down here next year’,” said Wignal.

"This is game-changing in terms of visibility and an active player being with us, you can't put into words just how special that is.”