Jeremy Cameron reveals he diced with death while fishing for kingies
Jeremy Cameron had a season from hell in 2018, headlined by his on-field incident with Brisbane’s Harris Andrews. The GWS star tells MARK ROBINSON why he’s no thug, dealing with injury - and almost dying on a fishing trip.
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A year ago last Sunday, Jeremy Cameron and teammate Dawson Simpson could have been killed.
They were forced to abandon their tinnie when fishing just outside of the Sydney Heads.
As much as he can find trouble on the field, this was close to the worst kind of trouble.
“It wasn’t a great start to our Sunday,’’ Cameron said.
He and Simpson, who has been described as the best bloke in football, had been fishing for three hours and found a hot spot.
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They were landing kingies between the heads and Manly when a rogue wave swamped their boat.
The 5m tinnie filled with water and the shock and panic quickly heightened when the boat was swept towards the rocks.
The pair — who were not wearing life jackets — bailed out about 20m from where the boat was eventually battered by the rocks.
“We were enjoying ourselves until we got hit by the wave,’’ Cameron said.
“The boat filled with water and steered us towards the rocks and we had to bail and swim back out.
“It happened very quickly. It came out of nowhere. We were trawling, we turned around and it just kicked up and broke right on us and swamped the boat and that was it.
“We were pretty much surfing the wave on the boat. We came to halt, the motor was under water and wouldn’t start, and that’s when I made the decision for me and Daws to jump out and start swimming to get away from the boat and the rocks.’’
The pair were in the water for 20 minutes.
They swam 200m from the rocks and floated, and were spotted by people walking on top of the heads. A lifeboat was dispatched from Manly to rescue them.
Teammate Toby Greene, who was living with Cameron, said Cameron was “white as a ghost’’ when he returned home.
”He asked how we went I said, ‘Oh mate, seriously, we sunk the boat’.
“We were pretty lucky. Looking back, we were never in real strife, but these things definitely can turn into horrible situations.
“A couple of months later someone did die from a similar situation. It just shows how dangerous it can be.
“I’ve learnt there’s a bit of a reef under the water there and it’s why waves can really jack up. I think it’s called Dead Man’s Corner or something like that.’’
The fishing mishap aside, Cameron’s pre-season last year was faultless.
He started the season with 6.3 against the Western Bulldogs and 3.1 against Collingwood.
In Round 3 against the Swans, he busted his toe in an attempted tackle in the third quarter.
Cameron tried to grab a running Swans opponent, he was swung around in the momentum and his toe was jammed into SCG turf.
Faultless had become crippling three weeks in.
“It crunched all that joint, the big-toe socket,’’ he said.
“I knew something was wrong because when you get a stinger in your foot, or someone treads on your toes, it hurts for a couple of minutes and then goes.
“But this stayed for the whole game. It was shocking the next day and scans showed it had broken.’’
Training thereafter was largely running laps and game day was injections pre-match and again at halftime.
In many games, he felt the painkiller wear off during second quarters.
“Some blokes don’t really love injections, but mentally I was fine with that. It was getting used to the numb feeling,’’ he said.
“It was the kicking I struggled with. I remember the first game after, we were in Canberra playing Freo, and I think I had seven or eight clangers and a lot of them were shots on goal and I kicked them out on the full.
“I felt it all the year and I still feel it now.
“It’s not as painful, but it’s not 100 per cent. It feels like the whole joint has been fused, there’s not much movement.
“It doesn’t hurt running, and kicking is fine. It just goes numb. The good thing is I don’t need injections anymore.
“Like I said, the whole year I had to get it injected, right up to the Harris Andrews incident and when I came back I had to top it up to get through games.’’
The day after playing games was the worst, he said.
“I did nothing. I’d try to move around but I could hardly walk on it.
“A couple of times I was in a moon boot on a Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and then I’d try to train.
“It pissed me off because I’d had a good pre-season and wanted to take that in the season.’’
He brought it up first — the Harris Andrews incident.
He’s taken stock, big Jez.
He still goes fishing in the same spot — with a new, bigger boat — but is more careful of his surrounds.
And he will still play aggressive football, but says he will try to be more careful with opponents.
“As you go through life you have learning moments and times where incidents do happen and you can learn from them,’’ he says.
“The boat was one and the Harris Andrews thing was certainly another one.’’
The toe torment was pushed aside when, on a glorious day for football at the Gabba, Cameron was involved in a savage hit on Andrews, a hit which caused brain bleeding for Andrews and which prompted fierce condemnation.
A moment of indecision and catastrophe became weeks of reflection and abuse.
“Any footballer would say you don’t want to hurt someone the way Harris Andrews was hurt that day,’’ Cameron said.
“It was pretty crap week, obviously for him a challenging couple of weeks and for myself, I felt horrible.’’
He’s an aggressive footballer, Cameron. Always has been. He played senior footy with Dartmoor, inVictoria’s south-west, as a 16-year-old after giving away golf.
“All my mates were playing footy, and I was missing out on a lot I felt,” he said.
“The golf course can be quite lonely, so I made the switch. I went to training and I went straight into the seniors.”
He learnt he had to be aggressive against men.
“In the country most of the guys are petty tough, and rough around the edges, and I was in amongst that,” Cameron said.
“I loved the guys who really put their heads over the ball and who were courageous. That’s where I learnt to play with that aggression.’’
In the aftermath of the Andrews collision, he was labelled a thug, a yesteryear trophy hunter.
“I’m not a guy who reads everything that pops up and dives deep into that sort of thing,’’ he said.
“For me, I went about my business. I was very disappointed with how it turned out.
“I feel like I let my teammates down and I feel like I let Harris down because he missed a chunk of football.
“In terms of what other people were saying, I didn’t read it. I heard through mates and family, particularly back home in Victoria, but I didn’t go into it too much because I felt it would get me down a little bit more.’’
Still, he’s a little confused about what he should’ve done in the circumstance.
He lead out, eyes on the ball, having beaten his opponent on the lead, and in the moment he believed he was going to mark the ball, a brave and committed Andrews launched back into the drop zone.
At the time, Dermott Brereton argued it wasn’t a thug act and that Andrews’ bravery contributed to the frightening clash.
“It’s very hard to pick apart what happened,’’ Cameron said.
“It looks horrible as it happened and the more you slow it down it looks even worse. But it happened that quick.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’m going into mark the ball’ because I had my opponent beat.
“I’m thinking, ‘it’s going to land somewhere in front of me and I’m going to mark this ball’.
“Harris Andrews has come off Harry Himmelberg and drops back and as you said, he’s very courageous and comes flying in to help out his teammate. And I’m already in the air.
“You can pick it apart and to tell you the truth I did in the days after. How could I possibly make the outcome different? How can I not hurt him like I did? There’s lots of different ways you can look at it.
“In the weeks after, I was thinking, ‘how can I train myself to protect myself without having the outcome we did’?’’
Think about it. How does Cameron teach himself not to attack the ball with the fury and commitment which is natural and instinctive?
“It is difficult. The one thing I do know is I’m not charging out there to take his head off.
“Over many years there has been thug acts, but I definitely don’t think it was a thug act.
“To me, that’s punching someone in the face or from behind and you knock someone out.
“This was milliseconds, flying at the ball, having two big blokes coming either way and crashing into each other.’’
He missed five weeks and returned in Round 20 against Carlton and kicked four goals. He does not come across as callous, but he says the incident did not leave him with mental demons.
“I though it might’ve affected me a bit more going back and playing, but once I got out on the field, it sort of all went away.
“My natural instincts, you know, I’m back in the game, in the heat of the game and my mind was just on that.
“But there was one moment in that Carlton game, where I basically didn’t fly for the ball because someone was coming back with the flight.
“I knew he was going to go for it, and I was coming at speed. But I slowed down and tried to spoil it and he ended up marking the ball.
“I was pissed off with myself. I should’ve went and at least spoiled the ball.
“That exact situation felt like it was at the start of pre-season and you’re in match-play and you don’t want to hurt your teammate. To tell the truth, that was the only time it happened.’’
The best news for Giants fans is Cameron despite his wonky big toe, has had another faultless pre-season.
He’s 196cm and is 96kg of muscle, speed and aggression.
He’s softly-spoken, honest with his offerings and, Giants staffers say, just a terrific, no-nonsense lad,
At 25 and having played 130 games, he’s about halfway through his football career.
He set PBs in the time trials and hasn’t missed a session. Greene said Cameron had been a “beast’’ on the track.
Arguably, at the halfway mark of his career, greatness beckons if he has an injury and suspension-free next several seasons.
‘’I’ve been happy with what I’ve been able to do in my career,’’ he said.
“I never thought I’d leave Dartmoor and become a footballer.
:I’m proud I’ve been be to do that but, I want to take my game to the next level now.
“I will keep challenging myself to become a better player and I definitely want to be a great player.’’
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