DJ Cameron wordsmith who stood his ground

Someone had to do it and veteran Herald sports writer did it the best

J Cameron was rarely rattled by anyone. Not a riled- up cricket hero fuming over a story the candid Herald sportswriter had written, nor a thirsty, world- conquering mountaineer.

Cameron was renowned for calmly standing his ground, and being able to talk on equal terms with almost anyone.

Among the tales that have flowed since Cameron passed away this week — “run out” at 83 — was an illuminating one from Prime news presenter Eric Young, who, as a young sports reporter, worked alongside Cameron on numerous cricket tours.

In 1988, the New Zealand cricket team were touring India, and before the deciding third test in Hyderabad, Cameron — the patriarch of the New Zealand cricketing media — and Young, his Auckland Star rival, were sitting at a hotel bar after filing their stories.

“Then from behind us came an unmistakably famous Kiwi voice: ‘ What does a bloke have to do to get a drink around here?’ And there was Ed Hillary,” Young recalls.

While Young was gobsmacked, Cameron simply replied: “Well, the traditional way is to put your hand in your pocket.”

That was quintessential Donald John Cameron. Part of the reason he was regarded as one of New Zealand’s finest sports journalists for half a century was his ability to natter with a club rugby coach after training on a damp winter’s evening, or to the “poohbahs” of world cricket at the hallowed ground of Lord’s. And he would walk away with a colourful story or a pointed column every time.

He was one of the last old- school news gatherers. Without the luxury of television coverage when he began as a sports correspondent in the 1950s, Cameron travelled the length and breadth of the country — with a typewriter under one arm, and a suitcase under the other — to cover Ranfurly Shield matches or cricket board meetings.

Before fax machines and laptops, he relied on local post offices to telegraph his reports back to the Auckland office.

“He never sat around waiting for the phone to ring,” says one of his sports editors, Bruce Morris.

“It also wasn't in his character to cruise to retirement, and right to his last days on the paper he would call into North Harbour rugby practice on a miserable Tuesday night to sniff out a story.”

During a 48- year career in the New Zealand Herald sports newsroom, Cameron’s tattered contact books spilled with the phone numbers of sports icons.

“His list of contacts was ridiculous,” Young recalls. “I was phoned more than once by my bosses and asked why I’d missed a story that DJ had broken, and the reality was my contacts were 30 years behind,” says Young.

“DJ had built those relationships over time — in the days before sports hid behind communications managers.”

It was that dedication to the job which helped Cameron win the respect of fellow journalists and athletes.

Former All Black Sir John Graham, who also managed the New Zealand cricket team in the 1990s, recalls Cameron was “popular enough to be invited to travel on the team bus”.

“His work was impeccable, and he had the ability to get on with anyone. Of course, you can’t please everybody, but he could make his way with great politeness,” Graham says.

At the same time, Graham says, Cameron was prepared to write what he felt needed to be said. “He took on some big challenges and never backed away from them.”

He passed on that ethos to Wynne Gray, the Herald’s main rugby writer for 27 years.

“He told me: ‘ You are employed as a journalist — not someone who is a stenographer to record the coach’s thoughts on a game. Your job is to give the readers an opinion on what you’ve seen’. By and large, that was very sound advice,” says Gray.

Cameron’s printed opinion saw him sometimes cross swords with a player, coach or official. One was Richard Hadlee, who took legal action against the Herald over an article Cameron had written from a dinner speech in Adelaide. The two men eventually made peace with a handshake.

During Glenn Turner’s turbulent career as coach of the New Zealand cricket side in 1995, he bawled Cameron out in front of his colleagues over a story he was unhappy about. “Don was, predictably, unimpressed, and reminded me that writers remained in their jobs much longer than coaches — and he certainly got that right,” Turner wrote in the foreword to Cameron’s 1998 autobiography Someone Had To Do It.

Cameron was also a master of the literary flourish. Of the many sports books he wrote, Caribbean Crusade, following New Zealand’s maiden cricket tour of the West Indies in 1972, remains one of the great Kiwi sports chronicles.

“As much as we used to giggle at his sometimes flowery prose, every now

Sir John Graham