Charles Happell has been a journalist since 1985, when he discovered to his astonishment that the Melbourne Sun had agreed to take him on as a cadet. After spending three years in Canberra, covering Federal Parliament, 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. 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.
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 has also contributed widely to books, magazines, TV and radio shows. Most recently he was 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. (He would also like to dispel speculation there is a picture of Buddy Franklin in his wallet.)
Tim Lane is an AFL commentator for Network Ten and 3AW, and a weekly columnist for The Sunday Age. He previously broadcast sport for 30 years on the ABC. His measured tones, reasoned analysis and willingness to broach the tough issues have made him a doyen of the craft. His career highlights include five Olympic and six Commonwealth Games, 25 AFL/VFL grand finals, and Australian cricket tours of England, India, Pakistan, and South Africa. This year Tim broke the 20-minute barrier for the first time in Lorne’s famous Pier to Pub swim, but his highest-level sporting involvement was a four-month stint as a caddie for Australian golf professional, Vaughan Somers, on the European Tour in 1988.
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.
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.
Kim developed a passion for sport in the cradle. These days, in between watching every ball of Test match cricket, playing backyard footy and hero-worshipping Roger Federer, Kim is captain of the Australian Rowing Team and is finishing off her Media and Communications/ Law degree at Melbourne University. She is a Rowing World Cup gold medalist and is based at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. A former World Youth 400m hurdles silver medalist, Kim is a state surf-lifesaving representative and has worked at both Athletics Victoria (Communications Manager) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. Her love of the Essendon Bombers - where her father, Max, played some of his 200 VFL/AFL games - is surpassed only by her love of good grammar, Tim Lane’s writing and the departure gate at Canberra airport.
James Dunn is a freelance finance journalist, investment author, lapsed cricketer and formerly impassioned fan of the boys in the baggy green. Well, all he ever asked of them was that they beat England. Emphatically. The abject Ashes surrenders of 2005 and 2009 have cured him of some of his passion: he has realised the waste of having his emotional well-being riding on the angle of Mitchell Johnson’s bowling arm, Ricky Ponting’s field placings and Michael Hussey’s perception of where his off-stump is. James is attempting to rebuild Australian cricket from the ground up, with the East Malvern Under-13s - his very own Petri dish - where he is match-day coach. A winter devotee of Essendon, James enjoys most ball sports (although rugby league tests him out) and he holds a particular affection for US college football. James still plays over-35s basketball for the Piranhas (that is, he’s on the court.)
Geoffrey Harris has had a passion for motor racing for half a century. His introduction to it was at a farm fence beside public roads at Longford, Tasmania, seeing Jack Brabham and his international contemporaries dart over a long bridge, through Newry Corner and out of sight along the Flying Mile. But it wasn’t until almost 20 years into his journalism career, mainly in newspapers, that Harris began writing about motor racing – initially for Australia’s largest circulation daily newspaper, the Herald Sun. For eight years he was the media manager at the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, organiser of Victoria’s Formula One and motorcycle grands prix. In this role he gained unique insights into the business of motor sport. These days he prefers to observe in the same way as the average fan – from TV and the comfort of an armchair, while still plugged in to impeccable contacts. In recent years he has written for Australia’s No. 1 automotive website, carsales.com.au, and will now contribute his perspectives to Back Page Lead.
Malcolm Knox is a former award-winning cricket writer for the Sydney Morning Herald and, more recently, the paper's literary editor. In that role, he broke the Norma Khouri hoax story, for which he won a Walkley Award. One of Australia’s most highly acclaimed and versatile writers, Knox has published five books and, in 2001, was named one of Best Young Novelists by the Sydney Morning Herald for his first novel, Summerland. His most recent sports books are The Greatest, an intimate account of the Australian cricket team's triumphant run from 1993-2008 and (as ghost writer) the autobiographies of Adam Gilchrist (True Colours) and Bart Cummings (Bart).
Francis Leach is a broadcaster and journalist with one of the most diverse CV’s in the country. These days he hosts “The Run Home” drive program on 1116 SEN sports radio in Melbourne 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!
Steve Mascord is a rugby league tragic who became a rugby league reporter. He has the corner post from the Illawarra Steelers' very first trial match, a piece of bandage from Great Britain captain Brian Noble's hand collected off the Sydney Cricket Ground turf in 1984 and enough VHS tapes of 1980s matches in Australia and England to fill a warehouse. More recently - since 1989 - he has covered the game for Australian Associated Press, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph. He has seen rugby league live in Australia, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, the United States, France, Italy, Russia, Malta and Lebanon. Steve currently works at Rugby League Week and as a freelance for newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations around the league world. And, of course, Back Page Lead.
Jon Pierik has been a journalist for almost two decades, spending time with The Daily Telegraph, Herald Sun, The Sunday Age and a stint with the New York Post. He has covered general news but made his name as a sportswriter, spending a decade as an AFL and cricket writer, including two years as News Ltd's senior cricket correspondent. This role involved extensive travel at home and abroad, covering Test series in India, England, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, and two World Cups in 2003 and 2007.
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.
Greg Truman’s career as a sports journalist was rudely interrupted in the mid ‘90s 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.
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.
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.
Sharda Ugra is deputy editor for India Today, India’s leading newsmagazine, based in New Delhi. She has been a sportswriter for 20 years, working with Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day and national daily, The Hindu before joining India Today. Early on in her career as a sports reporter, she did sports news phone-ins for Radio Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s overseas service. She has seen India play cricket in eight countries, written about the sport for academic and popular publications overseas, won Sports Journalists Federation of India (SJFI) awards for sports writing and worked with former New Zealand captain John Wright on John Wright’s Indian Summers, his memoirs of his years coaching India. Along with earning her monthly bread from India Today, she also writes an occasional blog called Free Hit for their website www.indiatoday.in. She is not an IPL fan but is unafraid to say it.
When they’re not selling faulty electrical appliances door-to-door to the elderly or posing as police officers in order to carry out random strip searches on unsuspecting female members of the public, Ronny Lerner and Dylan Leach take a keen interest in sport. Big-time sport. The kind of sport that captures the public’s imagination. Ronny is a veteran of four Lawn Bowls World Championships and Dylan has covered three Indoor Cricket World Cups - albeit in contempt of a restraining order of the West Brisbane Indoor Sports Centre on the last occasion. Every week these two heavyweights of the caper will squeeze their vast sports knowledge into 10 minutes of listening pleasure, otherwise known as ‘Red Time’, for the BPL audience. And if Ronny’s indecent exposure charges are thrown out in May, then there’s every chance that he will be able to co-host the program with Dylan for the entire year!
Bridie O'Donnell grew up in Queensland, watching rugby and NRL and, her favourite, the Olympics. She didn't start competing in sport until her second year of university, when participating in a triathlon seemed like a fun way to spend a Sunday morning. This began a love affair with endurance sports, and cycling in particular. After graduating from University of Queensland Medical School, she moved to Melbourne in 2001 and devoted her energy to rowing for five years, sculling at MUBC under the expert tutelage of Barcelona Olympic Gold Medallist, Peter Antonie. In 2006, she finished the Hawaiian Ironman triathlon and then began a specific focus on the individual road time trial. Now she is an Australian professional rider with UCI Team Valdarno (alongside 2009 World Champion, Tatiana Guderzo, and Italian Champion, Monia Baccaille) and spends six months of each year in Tuscany and six in Melbourne. For the first time, her pay cheques are coming solely from cycling as she takes a hiatus from medical work. (As well as writing about cycling for BackPageLead, she files for her blog, Bridie.com.au.)
