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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Barney Ronay

Breaking down macho cultures? No, the Sun is simply monetising David Coote’s distress

The referee David Coote gestures during the Premier League match between Crystal Palace and Manchester United in September 2024
David Coote, pictured during the Premier League match between Crystal Palace and Manchester United in September 2024. Photograph: Andrew Kearns/CameraSport/Getty Images

“I didn’t want to stand out from the crowd. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.” Fair points, there, from David Coote. Or as he must now apparently be described, cocaine ref David Coote, shamed ref David Coote, sacked ref David Coote and, because some kind of equivalence is being drawn, gay ref David Coote.

At the same time these statements from Coote’s interview with the Sun newspaper raise some equally important questions. First, given this, why did David Coote decide to do an interview with the Sun newspaper that serves no obvious purpose other to out himself as a gay man?

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