‘Jeremy’s attack on the footy needs to change’
JEREMY Cameron made a horrible mistake, but he is not a thug.
Cameron is an old-school forward who has the old-school method of making his opponent earn it if they get in his way.
It’s the mentality he was brought up with on the country footy fields around the tiny Victorian town of Dartmoor, where if someone backed into your space, you made sure they knew you were there.
I was the same growing up in the Riverina. If someone came back to intercept, or stand in the hole, or simply got in your way, I wanted to hurt you for it.
Sometimes you went about it the wrong way, sometimes you were too reckless, like Cameron was, and modern footy does not allow much room for that now.
Cameron copped his right whack at the tribunal last night, but the biggest fallout from this will probably be felt more by his teammates.
He has more ability in his little finger than I ever had and, given the Giants’ precarious ladder position, they can pretty much kiss their season goodbye considering how long he will be out of the team.
That’s how important he is. The Giants need everything going right to move into the topeight but will find the going so much tougher now without their main man in attack for an extended period.
Let’s be clear: Cameron did not set out to cave in Harris Andrews’s head.
But his instinctive reaction to throw out a raised elbow to brace for contact is a reflex he needs to get out of his game. It was crude, ugly and had serious repercussions that demanded punishment. Like I said, that can be hard to get out of your game if it’s all you’ve ever known. It is very hard to change.
But there are other ways to protect yourself in a contest and he did it the wrong way, so he needs to be better, especially now that past citings are starting to mount on his record.
To be honest, sometimes you are better off pulling out of the contest than running the risk of spending the next month on the sidelines for having poor technique in the contest.
He probably feels like he needs to be the physical presence in attack, but you didn’t see a Nick Riewoldt or a Jonathan Brown charging through with elbows raised.
Sometimes it’s very hard to walk the line and not cross it.
I interviewed him after the game on Fox Footy, and well done to Greater Western Sydney for allowing us to speak to him about the incident.
“I just played the ball on its merits,” he said.
“I definitely didn’t want to hurt him, and I’ll definitely give him a call or a message after the game, that’s for sure.”
But people have questioned whether there was enough remorse in his words.
Having got to know him a bit and seeing him on Saturday, I feel he was remorseful for his actions, but perhaps that did not quite come across on the broadcast.
Perhaps he could have said something to the effect of: “I’ve made contact and I’m really sorry for that. That’s not who I am and I hope Harris is OK. Whatever happens at the tribunal happens.”
Hopefully Cameron can learn from this, because we don’t want him to be remembered more for these incidents than his footy ability.