THOMAS Hitzlsperger, Paddy Power and Dulwich Hamlet FC are not three names you see in the same sentence but they are uniquely linked.

Last week Dulwich’s tiny Champion Hill stadium was packed full of fans cheering on both teams as the Hamlet ran out 6-0 winners.

However, the real story was not the crowd camaraderie or the score, but the visitors, Stonewall United.

Stonewall are the Gay Football World Champions and the match was the first of its kind in this country.

The friendly was a product of the stands. Dulwich’s gay rights advocacy was started by a supporters’ representative simply asking the first-team manager if he would help the fans’ anti-homophobia campaign and this snowballed into the ground breaking Stonewall fixture.

A week or so before the game marked an important anniversary for the biggest name in this odd trio. Hitzlsperger’s decision to come out as gay last year, the first footballer to do so since Justin Fashanu in 1990, was momentous.

A year on, the former Germany international has thrown himself into the role of LGBT advocate.

The final player in this unlikely trio are Paddy Power, the betting company known more for crude adverts than equal-rights advocacy. Yet they are also the main backers of the Rainbow Laces Day campaign and for that they must be applauded.

These three varied parties are doing admirable work but their very endeavours beg the question why is more not being done to promote the acceptance of homosexuality in football?

Why does it take a team in the Isthmian Premier Division to show professional clubs how it should be done? Why have more players not come out? Why does it take a bookmakers to get a gay rights campaign off the ground?

Sadly the answer is simple. It is still far too commonplace to hear the word ‘gay’ and other less printable homosexual terms used in a derogatory manner and go unchallenged in the stands at stadiums across the country.

That has to stop. That has to reach the same level of unacceptability as racism.

Hitzlesperger is not the only gay footballer of the last 25 years he is just the first brave enough to come out, even then he had to wait for retirement to do so. It is not right that there are others who do not feel comfortable enough in their profession to reveal their sexuality simply because they are footballers This is an issue beyond Swindon Town’s fans but they can certainly help the cause. Show your support, challenge those using homophobic language and ask your club to make a statement in raising awareness.

It is what Dulwich Hamlet fans did and if it is good enough for SE22 then it should be good enough for SN1.