Charles Happell has been a journalist since 1985, when he joined the Melbourne Sun as a graduate cadet. After spending three years in Canberra, covering Federal Parliament and the 1987 Federal election, he turned to sports writing and moved overseas where he worked in London and then for the Reuters news agency in Milan. He joined The Age newspaper in 1993, where he covered golf (including five US Masters), AFL, cricket and two Olympic Games, and became the Sports Editor in 2002. Since leaving The Age's musty offices, he has been Crikey's sports columnist and authored two best-selling books, the Bone Man of Kokoda and (as ghost writer) Wayne Carey's autobiography, The Truth Hurts. He co-founded BackPageLead in March 2010. A modest performer in Prahran CC's middle-order during the 1980s, he has no trouble however in racking up big scores on the golf course.

Jonathan is a relative newcomer to the Australian sports media. A Pom, he has been an adopted Victorian since 2007, taking the editorial reins at BackPageLead in late 2011. Jonathan has reported for The Age, was part of the Melbourne Rebels' original communications team and is a regular voice on SEN radio. In 2012 Jonathan produced and co-hosted The Sledge, a television show all about cricket, for Channel 31. He can mostly be found writing and talking about cricket and soccer but has quickly adapted to the indigenous game; as quickly as is possible for a Melbourne supporter anyway.

You've probably heard Ed Wyatt's American accent, whether it's on the radio, on television or at the supermarket asking if they stock Dr. Pepper. Ed is generally considered Australia's foremost expert on US sport, but as he likes to point out, that's a bit like being Switzerland's best hip hop artist. Ed has been in Melbourne since 2000, working for SBS-TV's Toyota World Sports, hosting the live telecast of the Super Bowl for the past nine years, and co-hosting Born in the USA on 1116 SEN sports radio. Prior to moving to Australia, Ed spent most of the ‘90s in Seattle, hanging out with grunge rockers and winning Emmy awards as a writer for the sketch comedy show Almost Live! He also helped launch the Fox Sports World network, which, among other things, brought Aussie Rules, League and Union to American televisions. Ed is a graduate of Stanford University.

Nick Tedeschi is a sports writer with a long and abiding love of rugby league. He got his break at Punting Ace and has written on the game ever since. Not backwards in coming forwards, Tedeschi whacks without fear or favour if he believes an injustice is being committed to his beloved game. A punter at heart, Nick always looks for the right betting angle in every game. He supports Canterbury-Bankstown and regards Andrew Johns as the game's greatest ever player and Craig Bellamy as its greatest coach. Nick writes the annual Punters Guide to the NRL Season series, wrote Chasing Greatness and has edited The Rugby League Almanac and A Short History of Rugby League in Australia. He is the founder and managing editor of Making The Nut. Nick also takes a strong interest in American football, where he rallies behind his San Francisco 49ers.

Like most sportswriters, Murray suffers from the delusion that he is also a fiction writer. This delusion was only heightened when he won 'The Age Short Story Competition' in 2010. Bribery was almost certainly involved. His football ramblings have been published in The Age and The AFL Record. He makes regular appearances on 'The Sledge' on Channel 31, 'One Hand, One Bounce' and any other medium where he is permitted to talk mindlessly about sport. He currently covers football and cricket for BackPageLead, although in the coming years he hopes to branch out to soccer, tennis and synchronised swimming. The pinnacle of his own sporting career occurred in 1999, when he won The University High School Table Tennis Championship without dropping a set. His life has gone downhill ever since. He is currently residing in Spain, where he is reputed to be dominating the foosball halls and further depleting the European economy.

Lou Sweeney is a woman. Don’t panic. Her sporting credentials are impeccable. As a property writer for The Age for 12 years she obviously knows a lot about osteitis pubis. She has also written on football for the same newspaper, as well as writing for radio, sketch comedy shows, and has had several sit coms stuck in development at the ABC and elsewhere. She once got a joke about Virginia Woolf on The Footy Show. After this she was heard to say, ‘Kill me now. My work here is done.’ At home she only has one rule: If you tip against the Bombers you must go and sleep outside under the climbing frame with the dog. Her nine-year-old son suffers from exposure. Her Richmond-mad husband has never seen the inside of the bedroom.

Francis Leach is a broadcaster and journalist with one of the most diverse CVs in the country. These days he hosts the breakfast show on ABC Grandstand Digital as well as being part of the station's live coverage of soccer and AFL football. Francis is also a regular panelist on the ABC's TV's Sunday morning sports show The Offsiders. He started his career as rocking the nation at the ABC's youth radio network Triple J, where he also hosted the network's morning current affairs program. Throw in a stint at ABC Radio National where he hosted a daily arts program for a year and you have the only broadcaster in the country who can lay claim to having worked with Philip Adams and Dermott Brereton!

Greg Truman's career as a sports journalist was rudely interrupted in the mid-1990s when he relocated to New York. Having reported on club, interstate and Test rugby in Australia and covered Wallabies' tours to South Africa, France and New Zealand, he swapped rucks for bucks moulding a US career as a finance editor while, at the same time, writing film and television scripts for kids' group, The Wiggles. Now, as Australian rugby prepares for its biggest challenges of the professional era, Truman's exile is coming to an end. Promising never to confuse John O'Neill with Dorothy the Dinosaur or slipping up by calling Rocky Elsom, Wags the Dog, he's committed to providing a truly national perspective on the game and making Fruit Salad, Yummy Yummy Australian rugby's Haka.

Growing up in the New Zealand rugby union heartlands of Northland and Otago could not stop Will Evans from harbouring an intense passion for Australian rugby league, compiling statistics and writing about the game for his own amusement from an early age. After graduating from the University of Otago in 2006, Will moved to Brisbane two years later and began writing for Rugby League Review magazine in 2010. He has been a contributor for Back Page Lead since the beginning of 2012, while his first book, A Short History of Rugby League in Australia, was published later that year. Will's second book, A History of State of Origin, is slated for a late-2013 release. A Brisbane Broncos fanatic for two decades, Will rates Darren Lockyer as his favourite player ever, but heeded a patriotic calling to switch allegiances to the Warriors following the Queensland legend's retirement. Will also keenly follows the fortunes – however dire they may be – of the Otago Highlanders and Northland Taniwhas union outfits, and the hapless New Zealand cricket team.

All too many years ago a job as a copy boy during university holidays landed Michael Davis a cadetship at the Melbourne Age. After seven years working for The Age and then it's crosstown rival the Sun News Pictorial covering courts crime and general news, a brief stint with a Collins Street public relations company led him back into journalism as a sports writer. He spent a decade covering football and golf for The Sun before joining The Australian as Melbourne sports editor, covering all sports locally and overseas. He also worked extensively for ABC and commercial radio. Michael’s work has been acknowledged over the journey by the Australian Institute of Sport, the Melbourne Press Club, the National Press Club, the AFL, the AFL Players Association, Cricket Victoria and the Australian Golf Writers' Association. He was awarded the Australian Medal for services to sport by PM John Howard. He now works as a freelance writer based in Melbourne.

Ashley Browne spent 10 years covering sport at The Age, specialising in AFL football, tennis and golf. He was instrumental in the establishment of Sportal Australia as Australia's largest digital sports provider and while there, was managing editor of the official websites of the AFL, Cricket Australia, the PGA Tour of Australia, the Australian Open and the Australian Rugby Union. He is now back as a senior writer at afl.com.au. He has also contributed widely to books, magazines, TV and radio shows, and has been the National Editor of the Australian Jewish News. But sport is in his blood and he will bring his passion for sport and deep media experience to BPL, a site he co-founded. (He would also like to dispel speculation there is a picture of Buddy Franklin in his wallet.)

Michael Reid has been a journalist for the past 30 years and covered a range of sports, including the AFL, the national soccer and basketball leagues and Sheffield Shield cricket. In 2000, he was a production editor for the Fairfax group at the Sydney Olympics. Since moving to the UK, he has written on European football for the Age and had articles published in the Guardian, the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph. In 2006 he was the sports editor for the launch of the Brunei Times. Career highlights include working as a senior editor on the Olympic News Services at the Beijing 2008 and Vancouver 2010 Games, and covering the 1998 (football) and 2007 (rugby) world cups, both in France, as well as the 2009 Rugby Sevens World Cup in Dubai. Based in Glasgow.

Mike Clayton is one of Australia's most respected commentators on golf, writing an insightful and punchy column for The Sunday Age newspaper and Golf Australia magazine. He has also written a book on observations made over his 30-year career, called Golf From the Inside. The 1978 Australian Amateur champion, Clayton forged a successful career as a professional, winning eight titles on the Australasian and European Tours, including the Australian Matchplay title in 1992, and the Coolum and Heineken Classics in 1994. Clayton is vice-president of the Golf Society of Australia, and a director of Ogilvy Clayton Pty Ltd, a golf-course design company he established with US Open Champion Geoff Ogilvy. A Hollywood film does bear his name, but he doesn't know George Clooney..

When it became clear that he lacked the genetic advantages to be Like Mike on a basketball court, Liam Quinn quickly realized that a career in the NBA was beyond his vertical leap. After spending a few years traversing the European continent one pub at a time, he returned to Australia ready to embark down the sports writer path, and he joined BackPageLead in 2011. Yet, after once again getting itchy feet down under, Liam hopped over to the US for a year where he further honed his journalistic skills at college, amid a sea of watered down beers and deep-dish pizzas. He was able to scrape enough coin together to make it down to South Beach to witness LeBron James win his first title. In addition to his work at BPL, Liam is the editor of Upstart Magazine, an online publication for emerging journalists.

William Thomson writes with passion, affection and, considering his love of the Melbourne Football Club, often with sorrow. Starting out as a very ‘green’ journalist in East Gippsland, William has covered sport at national and local levels and regards the editing of Orbost’s Snowy River Mail as one his most valuable experiences. Having since moved into the corporate world, William has become a white-collar figure who both admires and envies sporting professionals from the confines of his desk. He’s the guy that runs the office footy tipping, practises his swing at the water cooler and laments why it always rains on the weekends. William has continued to write in a freelance capacity – usually at BPL - covering AFL, cricket and golf. As for any sporting prowess of his own, ‘Jack of all trades, but master of none’ has never been more applicable. William is a weekend hacker, a handy back pocket and a good doubles partner.

Greg Ford has never won a major, let alone broken par. His interest in golf was forged during early April mornings watching Greg Norman's countless near misses at Augusta, confirming the truth that golf is an addictive but cruel game. Greg is interested in golf course architecture and the politics, culture and history of the game. He also keeps a close eye on the impact of modern technology on golf. One of Greg’s golfing highlights was a tour of the UK and Ireland, where he played and visited many of the game’s great links, including St Andrews. Like many weekend golfers, Greg knows the perfect swing is somewhere there – it just needs the right tip at the right time. And if that doesn't work, there's always the belly putter. Or a new driver...

Peter Thomson is one of Australia's best-performed sportsmen and perhaps its greatest golfer. The winner of five British Opens - in 1954-56, 1958 and 1965, the last of which came against a field that included Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus - Thomson is regarded as one of the most skilled exponents of links golf. He won 81 tournaments around the world, including nine New Zealand Opens and three Australian Opens. Since his extraordinary season on the US Seniors Tour in 1985, when he won a record nine times, Thomson has devoted himself to a successful golf design business, being president of the Australian PGA and captaining the International team in three Presidents Cups. He has been an active golf writer and columnist, mainly for the Melbourne Age, since the 1950s.

Although he'd probably blanch at the title, Paul McNamee is Mr Tennis in Australia, and few people are as well-placed to write about the sport. After forging a successful career as a player - winning two singles and 24 doubles titles, including two Australian Opens and two Wimbledons, as well as playing in two victorious Davis Cup teams - McNamee went on to become a leading sports administrator. He played a key role in founding the Hopman Cup international team event in 1988 and then became chief executive, and later tournament director, of the Australian Open. More recently, he has held key administrative posts at Melbourne Football Club and Golf Australia. Just how big is McNamee in Melbourne? Not everyone can claim to have been crowned King of Moomba, a title that was bestowed upon him in 1987.