International rugby referee Nigel Owens has admitted that he “didn’t want to be gay” and had even considered being chemically castrated.

Openly gay Welsh rugby referee, Nigel Owens, has opened up about his struggle to accept his sexuality in his youth. Despite being on the top of his game now – even being honoured with a World Rugby Award for overseeing the World Cup final – Owens suffered from extreme depression before he came out.

In a recent interview he revealed that he even considered chemical castration in order to “get rid” of his same-sex attraction.

“I didn’t want to be gay,” Owens told CNN. “I actually went to the doctor at one stage to see if I could be chemically castrated in any way, if it would get rid of me being gay.

“Looking back at that it was a horrific thing that one would have to do but that’s what I was going through at the time.”

Owens also revealed that at one low point, he tried to take his own life.

“It was only when my Mum came to see me in hospital when I tried to take my own life and she told me: ‘If you try to do anything like this again then you take me and Dad with you because we don’t want to live our lives without you’.

“I was an only child. I sat up in bed that night and I cried. I thought to myself that I need to grow up here. That’s when I accepted who I was and that was the biggest challenge of my life over with.”