Sam Lane

Sam’s first book, ROAR, is the definitive account of the birth of the Australian Football League’s elite competition for women. Published in 2018, and later reprinted, ROAR was formally endorsed by Australia’s first woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

ROAR became part of the global movement for gender equity, diversity, and inclusion, with the AFLW catalysing profound change on and off-field. Sam’s keynote presentations on the topic, in Australia and abroad, have included one at the Australian Embassy in Paris. ROAR went into reprint in 2023.

Sam is currently writing the story of sporting luminary, Erin Phillips, due for publication in 2024.

A trailblazer on television, Sam covered men’s AFL on Channels Seven and Ten for more than 15 years. In 2013, she joined Channel Seven’s prime-time Saturday night footy coverage and was part of Seven’s record-breaking broadcast of the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Sam was a panellist on Channel Ten’s Before the Game for 10 years, and also featured in the ABC’s Agony Aunts. She has covered every AFLW season on Channel 7 telecasts since the competition’s inception in 2017, and hosts a weekly AFLW podcast on the ABC: The W-with Sharni and Sam.

Sam’s journalism awards include two Melbourne Press Club Quills, a Walkley, two VicHealth awards, the AFL Players’ Association and AFL Coaches’ Association media prizes, and an Australian Sports Commission media award.

As a keynote speaker, event MC, conference host and panel moderator Sam’s clients include QBE, Virgin Australia, Mercedes Benz Australia, National Australia Bank, Sport Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, CGU, Open Universities Australia and the Sydney, Geelong, and Richmond AFL football clubs.

She co-hosted the Australian national speaking tour of basketball legend Luc Longley in sold-out shows through 2022 and moderated live events with Australian of the Year Adam Goodes in 2019.

Sam is a member of the Board of Directors of The Chappell Foundation, raising funds for homeless youth. She sits on the Sydney Swans’ AFLW steering committee and is an ambassador for Flourish Australia. Sam was a member of the Australian Institute of Sport’s Athlete Wellbeing and Engagement Advisory Committee, chaired by Olympic icon Ian Thorpe.

In her distinguished journalism career, Sam wrote for Melbourne’s The Age and Sunday Age, and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers for 13 years, reporting from Beijing, London, Rio and Delhi at Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

She has reported from the men’s Tour de France three times, and the first women’s Tour de France in 2022 on ABC television, radio and podcast.

Sam wrote, produced, and hosted two series of the number one-rating The Originals podcast for AFL club, Richmond, in 2020-21.

Sam speaks French, studying at the Université Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux to complete a Diploma of Modern Languages (French), and has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne.