Samantha Lane

An award winning journalist for The Age, and regular on ABC radio, Sam Lane also holds her own sitting beside some of Australia’s best known comics on Network Ten’s top rating AFL show ‘Before the Game’.

It’s ridiculous, really, given her beginnings as a reluctant footy watcher, her unremarkable sporting record and the fact that she holds degrees in Politics and French.

Voted the AFL Players’ Association’s football writer of the year in 2007, Sam began covering AFL while studying at Melbourne University and now appears across all media – print, television, radio and online.

She has a knack of balancing the serious with the irreverent, and on any given day is as likely to be writing hard-hitting front page news as an insightful, heart-felt feature story.

Though chiefly a football writer with The Age, Sam has covered major sporting events for the Fairfax group including the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth games, Australian Open tennis grand slams and the Spring racing. She is The Age’s cycling reporter and was recognised for her coverage of the sport at the 2009 Cycling Australia Awards, but has also dabbled in other sections of the newspaper.

Looking for a start in journalism while she was still a student, and inspired by a love of Carlton that didn’t hit until she was a teenager, Sam wrote to the editor of the club’s quarterly magazine and convinced him to take on a teenage casual writer. It led to a job at afl.com.au and eventually The Age.

In 2003 Sam was offered the position of newshound on a new Saturday night footy program called “After the Game’.  The following year, when it was reborn as “Before the Game” she became a full-time panel member joining Peter Helliar, Dave Hughes and Lehmo.   Mick Molloy and Andrew Maher have since jumped aboard to deliver the news, and a generous dose of humour every Saturday night during AFL season.

Sam is a member of the ABC radio’s football team, appearing weekly on leading pre-match program ‘The Sunday Inquisition’ with Gerard Whateley and Stan Alves, and was a long-standing regular on Melbourne’s much-loved community radio station 3RRR talking about footy and life.

Sam sits on the advisory committee to the Melbourne Vixen’s Board, is an ambassador for Breast Cancer Network Australia and the Women for Carlton.

Whether as a keynote speaker, MC or panel member – in front of the corporate world or kids – Sam is a natural, engaging speaker and presenter who can’t help but bring a fresh take.


Talent Manager:

Claire McLennan
cmclennan@profiletalent.com.au