Controversial figure Sam Newman unmasked in new interview

In his most intimate interview to date, footy figure Sam Newman has revealed all about his upbringing, career and his views on political correctness in today’s society.

Sam Newman has long been a controversial figure. Picture: David Crosling

John “Sam” Newman, 77, has been famous for 60 years. As a 17-year-old schoolyard footy star in 1963 he was fast-tracked into Geelong Football Club’s Seconds and made his VFL Seniors debut for the club in 1964. The headlines have not stopped since, from footy to media, celebrations to controversy, love and loss. His outspoken opinions on transgender issues, the Voice, Donald Trump and the Welcome To Country, along with his anti-woke stance, are well known. We think we know him so well, but do we?

FB: What did your parents teach you?

SN: They did not take me to a room and instruct me on what I should be in life and what my morals and ethics should be, but your DNA comes from your parents and if they are upright and moral and ethical people I suppose it rubs off on you to a certain extent. How you handle it going forward is a different matter, but they would have given me a great foundation for what they would think would prepare me for being a responsible member of society.

My father (Noel), he was an economics teacher and he was a very revered and respected house master and acting deputy headmaster at various stages at Geelong Grammar.

He was good at sport. He was a very good tennis player, a very good footballer, but he contracted TB (Tuberculosis) in his middle age and that precluded him from going to war. He spent two years out at the Heidelberg Repat Hospital and he had quite serious health problems. He lasted until he was 96. Strangely enough it (TB) came back when he was 96, and that is what killed him.

John Sam Newman, 77, has been famous for 60 years. Picture: David Crosling

FB: Were you spoilt growing up as the youngest child in your family?

SN: My youngest sister is 10 years older than me. I am the only boy. I was probably doted on by my mother and father, probably my father, maybe he wanted a son. I know he loved having his two daughters, but maybe he got some different perspective in life having a son.

FB: When did you first realise you were good at sport?

SN: I probably knew I was reasonable at sport when I won most of the events that I went in at school. I was good at athletics and was OK at tennis, very good at football. I was a very good schoolboy footballer, that is not egotistical to say that, that is just a fact.

I was a good surfer, used to surf a lot at the famous Bell’s Beach before it was famous. I used to do a lot of that because I lived on the coast at Point Lonsdale.

FB: You were still in school at Geelong Grammar when Geelong’s coach Bob Davis scouted you.

SN: He came out to see me while I was at school playing a game there. I had kicked 16 or 18 goals at centre half forward in a game, maybe I have exaggerated that as the years have gone on. He said he would like me to come and train with the Geelong Seconds while I was at school so I could qualify to play in the Seconds grand final in 1963, which was a bit of a shock to me, a young schoolboy going to play with men on the MCG.

To qualify to play in the Seconds grand final you had to play at least three games, so the school gave me leave to play three successive Saturday’s, the last three home and away games of the year. I qualified and got put into the Second’s grand final and we won.

Coming back in the bus they were all celebrating, drinking sherry and port and beer and I got absolutely pissed. I had never had a drink in my life. They tipped me out of the bus at the school. I think I got caned for turning up at the school alcoholically propelled. I was 17.

Sam Newman taking a mark in front of Robert Elphinstone in 1980.

FB: What next?

SN: The next year after I left school, I matriculated, I started in the Seniors (at Geelong Football Club) and that was it for 18 years. I did not play in any other competitions.

It was pretty daunting, suddenly you are coming up against fully-grown and mature men, so it is a bit of an adrenaline rush, a bit scary, but you know courage is not a physical thing, courage is a mental thing.

FB: What role did football play in your life?

SN: Football played a complete role in my life. I was a career footballer from the time I left school. I had no vocation, or such. I worked in a bank and appreciated working in a bank, but I did not have a business, I did not study to have a TAFE degree or go to University. Football was my existence in life. I formed a company, a wholesaling hairdressing supply business, with my great friend, Doug Wade, who was a teammate. We were in that for a decade and had a lot of fun and we were reasonably successful because we got bought out in the end, but always my focus was on being a footballer. I had no plan, I had no goals, I lived from week to week. I know people say they set goals and try to achieve them. I did not do any of that. I just lived from week to week playing football.

FB: Did footy pay well?

SN: When I started we got 10 pounds a week. There were 18 games a year and they used to pay you every half year and I remember bringing 90 pounds, nine 10-pound notes, home and I put it on the table. They were red 10-pound notes, and I remember my mother saying I have never seen that much money in my life. When I finished I was probably the highest-paid player (in the VFL). I earnt $70,000 a year in 1978, 1979 and 1980.

FB: An 18-year career and captain of your club, but a Grand Final eluded you with Geelong.

SN: In 1967 in the first semi-final I got kneed in the side and lost my kidney, so Geelong went on to play in the grand final (they lost to Richmond), but I was in hospital. That was my only chance to play in a grand final.

FB: What would life have been like without footy?

SN: How could you answer that? Football gave me every opportunity I have had in my life up until now. Because I played football I got into the media and because I got into the media I do what I do, or I got to where I am, and that is all indirectly a result of playing football.

Former footballer and TV presenter Sam (John) Newman in 1994.

FB: When did you realise you needed to figure out what life might look like after football.

SN: I was at a function called the Cazaly Awards which The Truth newspaper ran (in the 1970s) and which Ernie Sigley was hosting and it was a big award night at the Southern Cross hotel. Jack Dyer was supposed to be one of the presenters and he had a car accident on the way. The organisers came down to me sitting at a table and asked if I would mind filling in for Jack and presenting. They gave me a big running sheet of things and I said, ‘I have no idea what that means, I can not read that, I will just do it off the top of my head’, and I did and that is how it started. I just spoke to the people who came up on stage and asked them some different questions than the Dorothy Dix questions they were used to getting.

Then Ron Casey asked me to join the World of Sport on 7, which I was on for seven years. So I stopped playing football in 1980 and moved on to World of Sport in 1981 with Ron Casey, Bob Davis, Jack Dyer, Neil Roberts, Crackers Keenan, Kevin Bartlett and Peter McKenna.

FB: I remember the hampers they used to give away on World of Sport for the handball competitions.

SN: The Bertocchi ham, the Ballantynes chocolates, the Four ’n’ Twenty pies and Patra Orange juice. I lived on that when I went broke. I used to relieve them of the gifts they used to give the contestants and take them home and eat it, because I could not afford to buy food.

I went guarantor for a friend who was investing in a transport business and I lost my house.

That was in the late ’80s. I got myself back on track. I started to interview people (Sam was inspired by an interview with Cher in Playboy magazine) for the The Sun in those days and then the Herald Sun, and they were very successful for the paper and that got me back on track financially, a bit. Then Channel 9 signed me up (starting in 1989), not for the Footy Show, and then Eddie (McGuire) and Ian Johnson (boss of 9 in Melbourne) eventually came and said would you like to be part of a show we are putting together called The Footy Show. We did a pilot and, as they say, the rest is history.

FB: Did The Footy Show, which you were a part of for 25 years, stay around too long?

SN: It didn’t, but it became a victim of the changing standards pushed onto us by the politically correct and people who get aggrieved over everything that is ever done; that was its demise. There are plenty of shows that do what we do but they used to hone in on us because we were irrelevant and controversial and in the end the simple thing of going out and chatting to people on the streets (Street Talk), people said you should not be doing that.

I had a very amicable split from 9, very amicable.

Sam Newman says The Footy Show was a victim to the politically correct standards of modern society. Picture: Supplied

FB: Is there something else you would have liked to have done in the media?

SN: Maybe a tonight show. Before Steve Vizard launched Tonight Live I was in America (late ’80s) and I was watching David Letterman. I went to Phil Gibbs at Channel 10 in Nunawading when I got home and said, ‘I have got an idea for a show’. I told him all about it with a host at the desk and an orchestra at the side and guests, everything that I had seen when overseas, and you would not believe it, about two weeks later Steve launched his show Tonight Live.

FB: You were the subject of numerous headlines during your Footy Show decades. Did you believe everything you said, or was some of it said for effect?

SN: Most of it was said for effect. If you want to have a logical, sensible answer to anything you talk about, speak about or are asked, it becomes pretty boring, bland and plain so I always used to try and give completely the opposite answer to any logical question I was asked so it stimulated the interest of the person asking it. That is a pretty obvious ploy in the name of what is known as theatre for people watching. We were only trying to entertain the rank and file. We were not trying to educate or entertain the nuclear physicists that used to watch the show.

FB: Are there two Sams?

SN: Of course.

FB: There is Sam and there is John, isn’t there?

SN: Yes, absolutely. You would actually think most of the things I did on The Footy Show at a private dinner party with my friends would be the same, would you think that? No, it is all designed to ‘entertain’, just be different from what other people do, to make it interesting.

I don’t care what opinion people have of me, if they don’t know me. They can form their own opinion. Don’t forget this, your reputation is who people think you are, your character is who you really are.

FB: Do you have a career highlight?

SN: Not necessarily being successful, but surviving in a very cut throat business which is what the media business is. The beauty of the Footy Show was I never met one person that was assigned to that Footy Show that ever tried to knife you, snip you or take your moment away from you. We were a great team and that is very rare in this industry where people will just climb over you to get to the top and I have never met anyone in the business that I was in on that Footy Show that ever did that. I have experienced people trying to knife me in various jobs on the radio and various jobs elsewhere, but The Footy Show was a fantastic experience of loyal people.

Sam Newman fondly remembers his time at the Footy Show.

FB: As well as TV you had a long career in radio, particularly with 3AW and Triple M. How did your famous trade from AW to Triple M come about?

SN: It was Michael Gudinski who acted as an agent, if you like. I think Triple M wanted to break up Rex (Hunt) and I, because Rex was very successful (at 3AW) and I was just his sidekick along with Ron Barassi. I suppose I went to Triple M for the money, but I enjoyed Triple M, very nice people there.

FB: Any Rex radio moments that come to mind?

SN: There was the day I warned Rex not to break wind again in the (commentary) box and he broke wind again (mid-game) so I put the headphones down and I got in my car and drove home. Steve Price (3AW station manager at the time) rang me up and said, “where are you?” and I said, “I am on my way home’ and he said, “why?”. I told him I asked Rex not to fart in the box and he did and I said, “I will go if you do it again”, and he did and I went.

FB: What gets you excited in life?

SN: Playing football has been pretty taxing on people’s bodies and the thing I look forward to in life is having a good quality of life. I have had a lot of injuries and I have got through pretty well when you consider most of the people my age that I played with and against are in varying degrees of ill health and physical unfitness. So my main goal is to have a good quality of life and be able to do things I wish to do, which are boating and a bit of golf. I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs and I don’t smoke. I live a very pedestrian life, but I enjoy it. I have a podcast (You Cannot Be Serious) and I like doing that. We don’t do it for any commercial reason. It is very popular and I just like being able to give my opinion. If you want to listen, good, and if you don’t, that is fine.

Sam Newman pictured with his Lamborghini. Picture: Aaron Francis

FB: Are you religious?

SN: I am a believer. I have faith that karma will embrace you if you live a reasonable moral or ethical life.

FB: Your thoughts on the value of friendships?

SN: There are a lot of acquaintances you meet and a lot of friends you meet, but unconditional friends you could count on one hand; people who will stick by you no matter what.

FB: What is the biggest challenge we face in society at the moment?

SN: To push back on the politically-correct nonsense that people go on with, where a minute percentage of the population try to push an agenda and want you to toe the line on some imaginary thing that they think that you should follow. The greatest bugbear is having to put up with the bullshit that people lay on you about political correctness.

FB: Any life lessons you have learnt?

SN: Never take yourself too seriously. Laugh at yourself first and then have a crack at everyone else.

Sam Newman hosts the You Cannot Be Serious podcast. New episodes are available every Wednesday.