Steelers: The World's First Gay Rugby Club: NZIFF Review

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the 2020 New Zealand International Film Festival, doco Steelers: The World's First Gay Rugby Club falls squarely into the formulaic category as it spools out its story.

Eammon Ashton-Atkinson's doco delivers the story of the inception of the London based club, the ripple effect it had on the scene and the journey of the team at the Bingham Cup, the event where the gay rugby teams come together to fight it out.

It may be earnest and crowd-pleasing at times, but coupled with an overly bombastic piano score everytime there's a hard story to be told or a flashback to be conveyed and a voiceover of a script that's ripped from cliche, Steelers: The World's First Gay Rugby Club emerges as more of a damp squib than a firing-on-all-cylinders story.

It's not helped by the usual slow-mo shots from the game - there's little that feels original in here for even casual viewers of sports docos or coming of age stories.

Fortunately some of the earnestness and energy comes from the human subjects Ashton-Atkinson chooses to dwell on - Simon the never before out player, Drew the flamboyant also drag artist and Nicky the head coach who's mothered the team but is in her last season at the top job.

It's probably not wise that Ashton-Atkinson is a paid up member of the team, and perhaps he wasn't quite distant enough from his subjects to be more objective when it counts.