Verity Smith

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Verity Smith is a rugby player and LGBT+ rights activist in the United Kingdom. He has led diversity and inclusion work for International Gay Rugby and has played rugby union for Rotherham Phoenix and rugby league for Dewsbury Moor. Born in Hull, he tried several sports in youth—football, ice hockey, and Thai boxing—and began playing rugby at age 11 after his grandparents took him to a Hull Vixens match. He showed talent and, as a teenager, was allowed to play for the Hull Ladies senior team and later represented the North East of England.

In 2016, he came out as a transgender man and continued to play rugby during his transition. He has spoken about facing transphobia on the field, including moments where he was spat on and mocked by match officials. In October 2019, he filed a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation after The Sunday Times used a photo of him to illustrate an article claiming trans women posed a danger in rugby. The paper later replaced the photo and said its use was inappropriate and misleading regarding his gender and views.

That same year he suffered a severe spinal injury after being tackled by a female player. After recovering, he played wheelchair rugby league with the Leeds Rhinos. In February 2020, he attended a World Rugby forum representing International Gay Rugby to discuss transgender participation guidelines, but he was the only transgender rugby player there and was not allowed to present testimony. Later that year World Rugby proposed guidelines that would effectively ban trans women from women's competitions. Smith condemned the move as policing female bodies, arguing that the supporting research focused on cisgender athletes and did not address trans women in rugby.