SAMANTHA Lane lives and breathes football. But that hasn’t always been the case.
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There was a time when the award-winning journalist and football commentary panellist could not stand sport.
She was more interested in dancing, drama and watching the latest episode of Young Talent Time than cheering on an AFL team or reading the weekend’s sports results.
But Ms Lane’s life took a very different turn after the death of her mother.
Ms Lane’s parents had split when she was four-years-old and she had spent most of her childhood living with her mother.
When she was 10, her mother died and she moved in full-time with her father – well-known football journalist and commentator Tim Lane.
“His focus and passion in life was sport,” Ms Lane told a group of young Bendigo students yesterday.
“Dad remains to this day a sports broadcaster and has commentated on several Olympic Games.”
Ms Lane was the guest speaker at yesterday’s Women Showing the Way Forum. She told the audience her father had been obsessed with work and that, inevitably, sport had become a part of her life.
Ms Lane reflected on their taco and footy nights, when her father would cook her then favourite meal, tacos, and have the AFL on in the background.
Initially, she was solely interested in the tacos, but gradually she began to show an interest in the game.
Ms Lane said she had started reading The Age journalist Caroline Wilson’s sports reports.
“She became an educator of footy to me ... she bought the game alive.”
Ms Lane now covers footy full-time and is encouraging young women to follow their dreams, no matter what challenges life throws at them.
She said it was a great privilege to be a guest speaker at yesterday’s Women Showing the Way Forum.
“These kinds of things don’t happen every day,” Ms Lane said.
“When I went to school I can’t remember just being together with fellow young women of my age, I can never remember a gathering like this of women.
“So a credit for the organisers for getting this together.”