The childhood lesson that shaped Yvonne Sampson
As a respected rugby league television presenter, Yvonne Sampson is used to holding her own in a male-dominated genre – thanks in large part to a lifelong love of equestrian sport.
Stellar
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Like a lot of little girls who grew up in rural Australia, Yvonne Sampson’s first love was a horse.
By the age of two, she tells Stellar, “I had this hairy old Shetland that my grandfather would lead me around on. Then I got my first proper pony, a little appaloosa named Razzamatazz, when I was about five.”
By the time her family moved to a farm surrounded by hinterland on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, equipped with an arena and lush with paddocks, her love for equestrianism took full flight.
Even now, she says, “I would ride every single day if I could. I hardly ever get a chance, but when I do I feel like I need to go into recovery – all my muscles seize up and I feel like I’ve got rigor mortis.”
Sampson spent a lot of years immersed in the world of horses – in the late ’90s, alongside her university commitments, she actively competed in dressage.
At 25, she took a break from her early-career work as a junior sports reporter in Brisbane and went to Europe to work with an Olympic stud in Denmark, before moving on to handle thoroughbred yearlings at auction houses in the UK and France.
“I loved it,” she says. “I worked seven days a week, getting up at 4am, trying not to get killed by spirited yearlings while they were getting their first sets of shoes on. It’s funny; people think if you grow up with horses, you must be really rich and privileged – and you are privileged to a great extent. But it also gives you life skills and a work ethic.”
Plus, she adds, there is the tricky two-step that comes with a new horse. “You learn those negotiation skills for the rest of your life, whether with horses or humans – for sure.”
What Sampson also learnt, she now reflects, was an important lesson in gender equality that has no doubt informed and enhanced her current success as the leading rugby league host on Fox Sports.
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“With equestrian, boys and girls compete equally. There’s never any discrepancy or advantage to being either gender, there’s no special dispensation for anything. So it gave me a real sense of not just belonging, but also equality.
“So I guess when people say, ‘Oh, you went into a male-dominated genre with sport,’ it never really dawned on me that anything was dominated by a particular gender. I had always mixed with everyone equally.”
Sampson, 38, is an only child – born in Townsville, she was adopted as a baby by Janice and Robert Sampson, who were open with their daughter from the start.
“Growing up with foals being born and litters of puppies everywhere, one day I figured I would ask where I came from,” she says. “Mum and Dad were really good and told me straightaway; with that openness came trust and honesty. I asked questions any adoptee asks – and they’d do their best to answer them.”
And as the Queensland-born daughter of a footy-mad father who was born in New South Wales, grand finals and, in particular State of Origin matches, took on a special significance in her childhood home.
“I didn’t have any brothers to chase around,” she says. “So it was easy, as my dad only had me to watch the footy with. For our little family, it just became a way for all of us to come together – we would huddle around the television on those nights. I’ve heard it described as the ‘modern-day campfire’.
“Rugby league for me has always had wonderful memories and associations.”
When Sampson went to university and chose to study journalism, “I had to work out what I wanted to go into, and I wasn’t very good at general news. I didn’t like doing the same death knocks and fatals, and I was terrible at politics. So sport it is!”
And yet – after more than 20 years of experience as both an expert and a fan, Sampson is keen to point out that “sport has always been political. People have used it for decades to make statements – whatever is happening in sport is generally a reflection of what is happening in our homes, pubs, clubs and communities.”
That pride and passion is reflected back at her, says friend and NRL chief executive officer Todd Greenberg.
“Vonny has an intuitive knowledge and understanding of our game and we love her for it,” he tells Stellar. “Fans young and old, male or female, relate to Vonny because she is real. On top of that, she’s just wonderful company and always ready for a laugh. Rugby league is lucky to have such a wonderful advocate.”
The sport is also indirectly responsible for helping her meet her husband. In 2013, she and fellow journalist Chris O’Keefe met in a busy Nine Network newsroom in Brisbane.
“It’s been good to find someone who understands,” she says. “We have space and scope to get the most out of our careers because we love what we do.” One wrinkle: “He’s such a tragic [St George] Dragons fan. His dad is a mad Souths fan. We definitely can’t watch the State of Origin together because it’ll end in a separation.”
And while she mostly shrugs off any special focus on women in sport – “The girls run out as equal billing; it’s not a curtain-raiser... they want the female teams” – she admits there was a time she would never have hoped to land her “dream job”.
Even now, she admits, when the cameras are rolling and her nerves are rising, she falls back on some old tactics she learnt during her equestrian years.
“It’s not that I don’t know what I’m talking about or what to say. I just want to get it right – just like dressage. You want to be able to drive home after a broadcast thinking, ‘That’s as good as I could do.’”