Gareth Thomas is to join the line up of speakers at this year’s Federation of Sport Annual Conference which takes place at Dublin City University on Thursday, May 23rd.

The former Welsh International Rugby Player was one of the first in the sport to come out as openly gay and has featured telling his story as the centrepiece of a powerful Guinness ‘Made of More’ campaign.

He will be joined on the day by fellow speakers Katie Sadleir from World Rugby, Hugo MacNeill and Trevor Ringland, John Morgan and Michelle Dartry from Disability Sport Wales and Colin Regan who looks after Community and Wellbeing initiatives at the GAA.

The focus of this year’s Conference is on addressing the question of just how inclusive Irish sport is in 2019.

This will relate to areas of disability, LGBT+, age, gender and ethnicity as well as on how sport is used to build cross community relationships in Northern Ireland.

Thomas was in Dublin recently for Channel 4’s coverage of the Heineken Champions’ Cup semi final win over Toulouse.

He was to the fore in criticism of Saracens forward Billy Vunipola over comments he had made in support of Australia’s Israel Folau last month.

Thomas was attacked in Wa;es last year in a homophobic incident so knows the full price that still needs to be paid for being open about who you are.

Is sport doing enough to help those who are ‘different’ in any way from being involved? We will be a little wiser after next week’s event.

Tickets are available at https://www.irishsport.ie/tickets/