Nobody at Port Adelaide is more selfless than Travis Boak, says former teammate Cam O’Shea

Cam O’Shea was a homesick rookie when Travis Boak and Robbie Gray took him under their wings; he tells of what happened behind the scenes as Boak emerged as a leader.

Cameron O'Shea at home with housemate and fellow Power footballer Travis Boak in 2011.

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To put it plainly, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a more selfless person than Travis Boak.

His milestone game this weekend means a lot, not just to his family and the fans, but also all the players who had the privilege of playing alongside him.

“Boaky” first invited me to live with him and Robbie Gray about six months into my first year in Adelaide, in a place in James St in Woodville, just off Port Rd, and it probably says a bit about how welcoming he is and the kind of person he is.

I had been living with a host family and was a bit homesick, not used to being out of home, and I guess he went through the same thing when he was first drafted to Port Adelaide.

Both Trav and Robbie were mad on the PlayStation and there were some serious competitions while we lived there.

Former Port Adelaide footballer Cameron O'Shea, left, in 2011, during his time as a housemate of Travis Boak.

I ended up living there for about four years and I couldn’t have had a better role model.

Dom Cassisi was still the captain at that stage but Trav got the captaincy a couple of years later and it was an unreal experience for me, to come over and be living with the captain and have such a professional and hardworking role model to live with every day.

Then there was Robbie as well, and they’ve obviously both gone on to have amazing careers and still have plenty of good footy ahead of them.

Trav is the most professional person I’ve ever met.

To be able to see how he goes about things — I can guarantee he does more than anyone else at the club and probably does the most in the AFL.

I think it just comes from wanting success for the team and himself.

He desperately wants success for the team.

Cameron O'Shea and Travis Boak in 2012.

Travis Boak and Cameron O'Shea at a Port Adelaide recovery session in 2013.

Along the way he’s grabbed some personal accolades but I definitely know that team success is the ultimate goal for him.

It’s how he lives his life: his mother Chicki and sisters Cass and Sarah welcomed me in also.

Travis is such a family man and he always puts the effort in to having them come over and whenever he can he goes back home over to be with them.

One thing people probably don’t realise is the amount of work Travis puts in to the Childhood Cancer Foundation.

I remember him going into the hospital whenever he had some spare time just to spend time with kids who were going through a tough time.

He’s just selfless, a selfless person and probably the most caring person I’ve met.

The first time I went to his house was after a loss to the Gold Coast, our first against the Suns, and he had invited around 15 of the players to his house.

We were down, because it had been a bad loss, but he made it clear to us that if we put in the work, did all the right things, then things could change quickly in football.

I can still remember it vividly.

It had been a tough loss and he had invited all of us for dinner and a beer to build relationships because we were going so poorly at the time.

He told us things were going to turn and they did a couple of years later.

Travis played such a big role in that turnaround and still does in the club’s fortunes today.

Cameron O’Shea played 81 games for Port Adelaide from 2011-2016 and 11 games for Carlton in 2018. He now plays with University Blues in the Victorian Amateur Football Association.