This Sunday, St Kilda will dedicate its clash with North Melbourne to Love Your Sister, the charity co-founded by renowned Australian actor Samuel Johnson and his late older sister, Connie.

The tribute match will align almost exactly with the first anniversary of Connie’s passing, and brother Sam can hardly believe his boyhood club and his commitment to vanquishing cancer have coincided.

“You never think that you’re going to get to levels like this … it’s a beautiful confluence of events,” he said.

“On Sunday, my sister’s legacy will be rolling across those LED screens. It’ll be up on the big screen, out on the ground, her presence will be everywhere, and everyone will connect to that through their own cancer experience.

“When I’m watching Connie in that stadium come out in all the various ways that she’s going to come out, I’m there with her. I know how much her eyes would light up when she first sees that LED that says, ‘Let’s vanquish cancer now, buy your rose outside Gate 5’. I can just see the look on her face.”

WATCH: Samuel Johnson on AFL 360

And the personal significance of both charity and football club coming together has not been lost on Sam, either.

“This is a Grand Final for me,” he explained.

“It doesn’t get better than your family’s life-long team saying, ‘Come down and let’s help you out’ … It’s one organisation that typifies family meeting another organisation that typifies family, so for me it’s a blessed union.

“At the end of the day, I’m not fighting against cancer, I’m fighting for healthy families. I want us to be able to turn up to the footy next week. Can we just go to the footy without our kids or our mums being wiped out?”

And when it comes to his love of our game, in his own words, the accomplished actor is like any one of us.

“I’ve got the same memories as all of us: being a kid and going and admiring the gladiators.”

Sam’s love for the Saints forms some of his earliest memories, and his wonderful elocution captivates the imagination when he speaks of his beloved club.

“I don’t remember not going for the Saints,” he said.

“My dad took me to Moorabbin as a kid, so I grew up with (Nicky) Winmar, Stewy Loewe, “Plugger” (Lockett). I remember being on the field and these giants towering over me, I remember them ruffling my hair and letting me know that it was all cool.

“And, I remember a sense of belonging … I remember finding my tribe.”


Samuel Johnson holds two 'forever roses', available at Gate 5 on Sunday afternoon.

Plugger left an indelible mark on countless Saints fans in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and Sam remembers keenly the ritual-like pilgrimage of going to Moorabbin to watch the legend full-forward at work.

“Dad used to take me down to Moorabbin and I’d be allowed to eat a Four’n’Twenty,” he recalled.

“And we’d sit there and watch this beast they called a man, this earth-mover, this fast, bulky Tassie Devil that just tore through everything.

“I certainly don’t remember the nuances of the game, I remember the gladiatorial, battle-like nature of it.”

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And despite his rise to fame, most recently portraying fellow high-profile Saints supporter Molly Meldrum in Molly, Sam’s undying love of football and the red, white and black has never waned.

“At the end of the day, what makes footy is the families that build it; the families that build the players, and the families that come and watch,” he said.

“It does strip down those social barriers that often impede us in life. At the footy, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or what seats you’re in, you’re seeing the same thing.”

Love Your Sister will be selling hand-crafter paper ‘forever roses’ outside Gate 5 at Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon when the Saints take on the Kangaroos, with all funds raised going directly into research of cancer.