Rallying Back | The challenges and triumphs of the UK’s longest running LGBTQ+ tennis group

we lost a lot of members uh to AIDS this plague that they were calling it we didn't really understand what was happening there was no cure um that we knew of it was difficult to lose so many so many [Music] people I mean I always knew that I was gay from a very early age at school um and um certainly my parents um didn't accept it at all um they were very um angry about about it and um so I left home at the age of 17 life was um very much all about being careful um but when I came down from Derby to London that really transformed my life cuz I realized I wasn't alone there were hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of other people okay I was living in West croin at the time and there was an advert in the paper for the local CH Group which is campaigned for homosexual equality social group so I went along there spoke to the guy who was running it and he said would I be interested in helping out the group and said no okay fair enough I had never even met knowingly a gay person before then when I was 24 and then all of a sudden you got 100 plus people coming into a room and I thought wow wow this is different so then I joined the social group we were at a social meeting one day and a couple of us were talking about tennis and we decided to start playing tennis up at e Cen there's three of us and then Jim came along which should be 77 I think um and it started from there so we put an advert in our local paper our newsletter um put an advert in for interested tennis players your shorts were rather short well they were in these they were they sum of my were OB it started in the summer of 77 and I think by October we already had 20 22 people had played so that was quite a good start really I was very key on tennis I'd always been a member of a tennis club and enjoyed playing very much so I made contact with them and and joined and um as a result um made many many friends oh yes when the group started playing tennis down on one of the sort of public courts you get a lot of abuse some people really weren't happy about us playing there uh and and they tried to intimidate us and and make things difficult for us by not leaving the court when it was our time to play or things like throwing stones at us letting our tires down on the cars or intimidating us at the entrance it was annoying but we kind of stood up for ourselves at the end of the day we wanted to play tennis we weren't interested in what people were saying people who become HIV positives and consequently lose their jobs or become too ill to carry on have had to fend for themselves entirely despite government advertisements and warnings about the disease it's still on the increase and despite public appearances by members of the royal family with Aid sufferers to try and quell fears about the disease there's still widespread ignorance about how it's contracted it was the media wasn't it that started talking about it there was a a lot of um um homophobia and AIDS phobia at the time there really was um they talked about the gay plague that we were almost blamed for this uh uh disease which of course is completely ridiculous scientifically felt like nobody really knew what was happening but somehow people were getting very sick and very quickly but it was all very mysterious similar to covid in that way we didn't really understand what this far was about why it seemed to be in particular affecting uh affecting drug users and um um gay men in particular the group numbers fell significantly as a result of people being infected some people just dropped out and we didn't we didn't really know at the time that they had died of AIDS it was quite common to talk about funeral fatigue I lost in particular one very good friend of mine um and that that was that was very upsetting obviously I played doubles for many many years with Mike Harvey whom one of our trophies is named after and we we were quite quite successful he was a better player than me he was actually a painter and decorator and one amusing anecdote was he said guess where I'm furning from and he happened to be in 10 Downing Street because the firm for which he worked as a painter and decorator happened to have the contract for painting in 10 Downing Street so that was quite [Music] amusing well unfortunately um Mike who was one of our best players and a lovely lovely man he uh became infected as did many others it was very very sad very sad indeed um one of the side effects was um uh kosi saroma which affected the skin and you had black marks in the skin and I remember he was after a long sleeve tennis shirt I think I think we had to compromise in a cricket shirt in the end but cuz he didn't it didn't really want them to be seen something you would be very self-conscious about at least I [Music] would Mike died of AIDS in just after New Year in 1990 it was undoubtedly a very difficult [Music] period not enough was being done in in croen to support gay people people that we were playing tennis with um were coming down tennis on Sunday and having a difficult time not feeling great but they hadn't really got any support with them to go to hospitals to go to doctor appointment maybe then when they were becoming more ill to help them with things like their shopping and there was like a real gap between people's needs and and what services were available and we really as a tennis group we started to filling that gap for those people in the tennis group so helping accompany people to appointments if they're in a hospital visiting them helping to feed them helping to look after and care for them all really as individuals for quite a while but then we kind of got together in a front room uh with some of the tennis group friends and we said hey look we really can do something as a group a lot of us here volunteered um to set up um a project called the Ace project AIDS care and education to provide um facilities for people who had been infected um with some sort of support we looked for like a building that we could provide services from and at the time there was a dissu maternity hospital in South London that was vacant and uh the health authority kind of gave us a space but then we had to do all of the decorating and the refurbishment and the Furnishing of that place and that's kind of from my perspective where I came in set up a fundraising group we did shows amateur shows to raise money and lots of fundraising that sort of type of thing so we did well for that did Church halls and filled them up we're doing things like auctions and jumble sales Bingo nights race nights that kind of thing but also looking at setting up um covenants get getting people to leave us income in Wills so being kind of professional fundraising as well as the more informal fundraising we're still playing our tennis and it was very important I think it's probably more important then than it was before that because it was a social thing that we all enjoyed well we actually had what we call the ace Trophy and so um we had singles and doubles um tournaments um and and we paid uh money to um to to play in these tournaments uh as a form of fundraiser and we did this quite regularly I was a fundraising coordinator from 1987 to 2001 and during that period of time we raised as a community over £700,000 and that including raising the money to build two community centers and to staff them and to provide services and support so many amazing young people were taken um far too soon but one hopes that in some small ways we contribute to helping their last days which were a little bit more um you know more comfortable than they otherwise might have been how fast has it gone is it it's amazing that's 30 years ago still don't love all the people that we've had if anyone had told me in those days that civil Partnerships and marriages would be accepted and um that you could you know come out at work or at tennis clubs um with no fear of discrimination and Prejudice I would have thought it was highly improbable there are a tremendous number of groups these days lot of gay sporting groups of football tennis rugby we're getting so many new members which still suggest it's something that LGBT people are interested in want to be part of it might feel the safe place for some people still nowadays yeah it might still be the safe house for somebody to come to if they're not out or they're not free to tell people Unos brought me here to you you can never lose if love is what you feel then it's want the world for it's [Music] feeling let go better than your heart the we who we love yeah we love who we [Music] love in one word the Journey of the group from the the start up until now what word would you use god um amazing [Music] supportive proud [Music]