Nigel Owens, the international referee who made public his homosexuality two years ago, has said that Gareth Thomas’s decision to come out could help players in a similar situation.

Thomas, the former Wales and Lions captain, has become the first leading British sportsman to reveal that he is gay and Owens believes that he may have paved the way for others.

“When a player of Gareth’s stature comes out, it might make other players realise that if they are in a similar predicament, they don’t need to worry,” Owens said yesterday. “You’ll always get leg pulling, but if you can’t laugh at yourself, there’s something wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if more players came out.”

Thomas, 35, the Cardiff Blues wing who won 100 caps for Wales, revealed in a newspaper on Saturday how his marriage had ended and that he had contemplated suicide as he tried to conceal his secret. Owens, like Thomas, had to overcome suicidal thoughts before deciding to publicise his homosexuality. “You have to come to terms with it yourself first,” he said. “The fact that Gareth had a wife made it more difficult. I didn’t have a wife or family to worry about when I came to my decision.”

Owens was not surprised, however, when Thomas’s story emerged. It had been, he said, an open secret, not only in Wales but farther afield. “It was always going to be big news, once he decided to put pen to paper, but only because he was the first high-profile player to do so. That’s why people are talking about it, not because he’s gay,” he said. “The only adverse comment I’ve had was returning from a game abroad, when a couple of Northampton supporters passed what they thought were clever remarks in an airport queue. It was nothing really and I’d be surprised if Gareth had any problems.

“After the Wales-Ireland game last season, when I was on duty, I went out with a bunch of Wales players and their wives to a few clubs and afterwards a group of us went to a gay club and had a great night.”

Owens said that he was surprised that Thomas might have worried about a negative reaction from the rugby community. “After the positive reaction I experienced when I decided to come out, it was difficult to understand why a player might be worried, though I appreciate that Gareth might have found it difficult,” he said. “If Gareth had asked me, I would have said there was nothing to be concerned about.”

Thomas retired from international rugby after the 2007 World Cup. He played all three internationals for the Lions on the 2005 tour to New Zealand, leading the side in the last two matches after Brian O’Driscoll was injured.

One of the few professional sportsmen to come out in public was John Amaechi, the basketball player from Stockport who spent six seasons in the NBA. Unlike Thomas, Amaechi waited until after his retirement to reveal his sexuality and he told BBC Radio Five Live yesterday that potential problems for sportsmen wishing to come out would be more likely to emanate from administrators than players.

“It’s not a question of the players on the field, they’ll embrace their team-mates and not worry about sexual orientation,” Amaechi said. “But there are still people in boardrooms for whom it’s still a very big deal. Even if 90 per cent of people have grown up, there is still a 10 per cent, often in influential positions, who haven’t.”

While Thomas’s revelation was the first of its type by an international rugby union player, Amaechi says that there are gay players in other team sports, including the Barclays Premier League, who have yet to go public. “In the Premiership there are certainly some that I know who haven’t [come out],” he said. “In men’s team sports, there are a number of people. The reason that in the last Olympics, there were only nine [athletes who had come out], is not because gay and lesbian people are cowards who don’t play sport. It’s because sport still needs to grow up in certain areas.

“As much as society has moved on, sport is still dragging behind.”