Paul Vautin leads three-part Fox League series starting Tuesday
Paul Vautin is the subject of a new three-part Fox League Face to Face series beginning Tuesday night, with the interview running over the next three weeks. The paul vautin story is built around his own account of how a Brisbane battler became one of rugby league’s most recognisable figures.
Yvonne Sampson interview
The series is an extensive Face to Face interview with Yvonne Sampson, and Vautin uses it to trace a decorated career that moved from player to coach to media personality. He says, “If someone was to ask me ‘tell me about my life?’. I’d say it has been a surprise,” a line that sets the tone for a retrospective that is more personal than polished.
Vautin also describes his early years in Brisbane in blunt terms: “Growing up as a red-headed, freckled-faced teenager in Brisbane, I didn’t amount to anything. I wasn’t a great rugby league player at 10, 12, 13. No-one took any notice of me. I was a battler.” That framing gives the series its edge, because it starts with a player who says he was not an early standout and ends with a career that became part of the sport’s core memory bank.
West Mitchy to Redcliffe
At 16, after two years away from the game, Vautin says a mate, Kenny Rose, called because West Mitchy was short of players. He asked his father what to do, and George Vautin told him to give rugby league a go and not worry if he did not like it.
He went to Redcliffe, came back to the car and heard George say he had made 46 tackles. That detail is the pivot in the story, because Vautin says, “From there I knew that rugby league was going to be my sport.” He later signed a contract with Wests Mitchelton for $100 for the season, a reminder of how small the entry point was before the career widened.
1970s and 1980s
Each of the three episodes covers a distinct phase of his career, including first on-field interactions with Peter Sterling, Arthur Beetson and Wally Lewis, plus the influences of Frank Stanton, Jack Gibson and Wayne Bennett. The series also reaches into grand final moments, the brutality of rugby league in the 1970s and 1980s, his being pushed out at Manly and his final playing years at the Sydney Roosters.
Vautin’s mother, Leila Vautin, appears in the story too, standing on the sidelines with an umbrella to ward off vocal critics, while his father’s coaching lesson still shapes the way he describes the game: “My Dad taught me to tackle and it was ‘hips, slide, lock’. They can’t go anywhere.” The series should land with viewers who want the full arc, not a highlight reel, because it treats his career as both personal history and rugby league history.
