SYDNEY, June 15 -- Kane Evans spent more than a decade in one of the most physically punishing sports on the planet, and the heaviest thing he ever carried was something no opponent could see. He said as much on national television this week, and the relief in the saying was the whole point.

Speaking on Channel Nine's 100% Footy, the 34-year-old former front-rower came out as gay, becoming the first high-profile man in Australian rugby league to do so since Ian Roberts in 1995, Sky Sports reported. He described the moment of finally saying it aloud in plain terms, that a weight had lifted, the kind of sentence that sounds simple only to people who have never had to keep the secret it ends.

The gap is the story. Thirty-one years separate...