Vale Sam Landsberger

A tribute by Peter Lalor

Sam Landsberger made the front page one last time. He was the first item on the commercial channel’s six o’clock news. At 7.30pm Gerard Whateley paused at the top of AFL 360 and spoke eloquently of him. Mark Robinson, one of his best mates, did not make it behind the desk. Every sports desk gave space in its bulletins.

Aaron Finch and Glenn Maxwell posted messages on social sites. Justin Langer did the same. Tim Paine and David Warner both confided privately how much they liked the guy.

Sam’s death was all over social and legacy media. Noted by football clubs, cricket clubs, the league itself.

It is a tribute to Sam’s spirit and character that his tragic passing is such a significant event, particularly in Melbourne where he’d made such an impact on football media in such a short time.

And, while people acknowledged just how good he was at his chosen profession, it was more than that. There’s a lot of good journos around. Good journos who are such good people are less common. Few win so much respect and so many hearts.

Read the tributes and you will see variations on a similar theme: Sam was the man who lit up a room. He wasn’t a big or a dominant presence, he was the furthest thing from an Alpha male. He was sweet and he was sunny and he was humble and he was just a genuinely beautiful man.

There was a purity to him that shone through.

In paying tribute to him I’d said he “lit up the 2019” summer and it was true. I didn’t know him at all when we met in the UK covering the Ashes and World Cup, but within weeks I was totally taken by the guy and I’ve tried to stay in touch ever since.

We shared a car and we travelled from town to town. He was my kind of person. Took the job just seriously enough and put a lot of effort into making sure we had fun where ever we went. He was not a great driver. From memory I took over those duties.

You are blessed to be on a cricket tour. It is a sin not to embrace all it has to offer.

Sam did.

I grew very fond of him. We last chatted in April and we’d last caught up after the Boxing Day Test. Sadly it was just on the road from where he was killed in that tragic accident and not far from his home.

It’s easy to be cynical about how many photographs we take these days, but I often find myself grateful that we do and a lot of Tuesday night was spent looking through photographs from that tour.

Sam, spent a lot of time with the younger guys, there was a WhatsApp group called World Cup Battlers which was a vigorously entertaining place inhabited by Daniel Garb, Louis Cameron, Scott Bailey, Aaron Pereira, Jon Pierik, Rob Canning and James Matthey.

I’ve just scrolled back through. It’s Tolstoyan in length, shambolic and revealing in its own way. I’ve often complained about the gibber in these groups, but they develop their own humour and own momentum as people navigate the exhausting, permanent twilight of a cricket tour.

They’re established so we can coordinate travel and transcripts and meals, but they soon take on a life of their own. The in jokes are legion and only funny to those who’ve lived it.

Everyone is a freaking comedian on a cricket tour and while I was keeping a relative distance on this one, the younger reporters were having the time of their lives.

Early in the messaging Sam got excited by Afghan’s Mohammad Shazad, the player who when asked in a Q and A which he like more - sleep or food - replied “both”. He became a cult hero. When he was withdrawn from the tournament Sam posted the news with the line: “fuck the world”.

Owls were a running theme, but that’s a joke that will remain cryptic for now.

On May 27 I was late to a group catch up in Southampton. The following day we all met up a the Bathampton Mill for quick beer garden lunch while on the way to the next city. Sam’s clicked a photo from the passenger seat of me driving to the destination. Later there’s a picture of us all in Bristol. And then we hit Bath (I got a fine for driving in the bus lane). And London. And Nottingham. And Stratford-upon-Avon. And so on. Some driving. Lots of dividing up press conference transcripts, attempting to arrange meals late at night when the work was done.

You get to know people well in these situations. When you’re tired you let your guard down. I might not have been socialising as much, but we did a lot of driving together. Soon I was joining in the conversations with his girlfriend at home. He was calling me dad. Cheeky little bugger.

In Notts an age divide opened. Mal Conn, who was doing media for Cricket Australia, and I spent the night of June 5 at Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, a pub under Nottingham castle, while the kids went to a less reputable establishment.

In dreary Taunton Sam posted a screen shot of him googling “raging Taunton nightclubs open on Monday”. One night we somehow ending up on a trestle table in a lane behind a nightclub in Bristol. When it was my turn to go to the heaving bar I swear the DJ turned down the music and the nice young people stepped back to let me get served first.

There’s a lot of pubs on a cricket tour but to be honest there’s not many big nights. The time zones and work loads won’t allow it. There’s so many pics of people at lap tops, the gravy congealing on their meal and the bubbles escaping their beer as they bash out another yarn. There’s one of me in Leeds writing notes for Tim Paine’s column in the dailies on the back of a lunch menu with a pen I’ve borrowed from the café’s waiter. I’ve still got it somewhere. It’s quite the document.

I’m glad I’ve dipped into these. They’re making me smile. When somebody suggests a day white water rafting Sam says “I couldn’t be more available and less keen simultaneously”.

Among the pictures is the one of us at what I think is the Oval, but it could be anywhere. I love it because it captures a moment of joy the details of which elude me. He’s showing me something on his phone, I’m punching the air with happiness and he seems pretty happy with himself too.

It’s a moment of shared joy that sums up what it was like to be with Sam.

Weeks later he signed off to those who’d done the first leg of the tour (the World Cup).

“I was a newbie to the cricket circuit, but would’ve failed to draft a better crew with the picks SOS (Steve Silvagni Carlton Football Club) has activated over the past 10 years. A pleasure working with. Thanks to everyone for combining chunks of fun with slithers of sobriety.”

I went home early for a breather before the Ashes, he went to Croatia. Apparently I’d passed on the recommendation from my daughter and he was happy with it.

He sent a picture of a girl in a bikini dancing on a barrel at Croatian beach.

And then we were back for the Ashes which involved a lot less travel, no girls in bikinis and a lot more work.

I was really hoping the newspapers would continue to use Sam as a cricket writer as he’d done a great job in the early years covering the BBL, but AFL was his first love and he was lost to cricket after that. I suspect the people who covered footy wanted him back as much for the fact he was very, very good at covering the game as he was very, very good company for those covering the game.

In a short time in cricket he’d made a big impact. Prior to the World Cup he’d established his credentials covering the BBL. Sam had a real feel for journalism and had found a way to report on the that tournament when that task eluded most of us.

Ben Horne reminded me of this in his tribute to Sam.

“Early in the life of the Big Bash League when Jake Fraser-McGurk was first coming into prominence, Sam would post playful team lists on twitter where he would write Jake Fraser – and then insert an emoji of a rooster – alerting the world to the nickname of Australia’s latest cricket superstar,” Ben wrote.

“This was indicative of the pioneering role Sam played in covering the Big Bash League and helping turn it into a legitimate league.

“Sam’s aggressive news reporting and terrific sense of drama and mischief gave the BBL credibility when previously the media coverage of it was largely hit and giggle and full of puff pieces.”

You could see his creative approach in the popular emoji heavy twitter posts he did at the last two Olympics.

Dan Cherny, who now works with the News group but was once in opposition to Sam, also praised him.

“Having been on both sides of the fence with Sam, he was a tough competitor and the ultimate colleague,” Dan wrote.

“When I was in opposition to him in the early years of the Big Bash, I saw the way he covered the BBL and realised that was the way to do it.

“He had a crack, he broke actual stories and treated it like a proper sport.”

Robert Craddock was also impressed by his approach to the T20 game.

“Sam was a significant player in the Big Bash. He covered it forensically and without fear or favour. He helped dignify the entire thing,” he said.

“He had no apparent ego. He was the sort of journalist other journos love. Always putting his shoulder to the wheel, fearless, full of zest, never throwing around big opinions and never trying to make himself the story.”

“If it wasn’t for his prodigious abilities covering the AFL, Sam would have thrived as a national cricket writer.

But even in his relatively short time covering the Australian team, he made a big impact.”

It’s so wretchedly tragic that he is dead. I know he was very close to his family and loved them dearly. I can’t imagine their pain or the pain of his mates in Melbourne who were lucky enough to bathe in his light all year round.