Cameron’s Shoulder and a Hawk Going Under the Knife

There are two things in this great game that will age a coach faster than anything else — a leaky back six and a crocked key forward, and right now the Geelong Football Club is staring down the barrel of the second one with Jeremy Cameron on the sidelines nursing what by all reports is a serious shoulder injury sustained in the kind of brutal, bone-crunching contest that the AFL keeps telling us they want to protect players from but somehow never quite manages to legislate away properly.

Meanwhile, down Waverley way — sorry, force of habit, I mean over at Hawthorn — there’s a Hawk who’s been sent for surgery, which is never a word you want to hear in the same sentence as a footballer’s name at this time of year, and we’ll get to that shortly because it matters too, even if I’m not exactly weeping into my scarf over the fortunes of a club that’s won more flags than Carlton in the last decade, which is a sentence that still physically pains me to type.

The Cameron Situation: What We Know and What Geelong Is Hoping For

The Cats are, according to everything coming out of Kardinia Park, quietly optimistic that their big forward Cameron will be available for some part of their premiership push before the season is out. Now, I’ve been watching the VFL — the AFL, fine, I know — long enough to understand that “quietly optimistic” from a football club’s medical department means approximately as much as “we’re focused on this week” from a coach after a forty-point hiding. It’s the language of managed expectations and spin.

But let’s be fair dinkum about it: if Cameron does get back, even for the back end of the finals, Geelong becomes a genuinely frightening proposition. The man kicked four goals in his sleep last time he was fully fit and firing. He’s the kind of forward who changes a game just by standing in a contest, the sort of presence that drags defenders out of position and creates the corridor that runners like Stengle and Hawkins can exploit.

Back in my day, of course, you’d strap the shoulder up with some tape and a prayer and send the bloke back out there, but I’m not here to relitigate sports medicine — I’ll save that argument for another column.

Shoulder Injuries Are Nasty, Full Stop

The shoulder is, and I say this as someone who’s watched a truckload of football across a lot of decades, one of the most deceitful injuries in the game. A bloke can look fine in the warm-up and then spend three weeks unable to lift his arm above his waist once the adrenaline fades. The joint is complicated, the recovery timeline varies enormously depending on whether we’re talking a dislocation, a separation, a labrum tear or something else entirley, and the Geelong medical staff will be working through exactly that kind of calculation right now.

The Cats aren’t going to rush him and risk turning a six-week injury into a season-ender, and nor should they. Not with a list deep enough to stay in the eight while they wait.

Geelong’s Depth Is the Real Story Here

Here’s the thing that genuinely irritates me as a Carlton supporter — and trust me, there are plenty of things that irritate me about the competition at the moment, starting with the interchange cap being used as a blunt instrument and ending with the deliberate rushed behind rule, but that’s beside the point — the thing that irritates me is that Geelong keeps losing bodies and just… keeps going.

They’re not a perfect team this year. They’ve had blips on the radar, the odd flat performance that had some people writing them off, and then they quietly tick over wins without three or four of their best players and you go, right, yes, Geelong again, of course. It’s maddening. It’s like watching a chess opponent who has extra pieces you didn’t know about stashed under the board.

The midfield brigade in particular has enough cover that losing Cameron for a stretch doesn’t hollow them out the way it might hollow out, say, a club that is currently rebuilding its list and shall remain nameless but wears navy blue and was founded in 1897 and is the greatest club in the history of the competition.

The Hawk Heading for Surgery

Now to Hawthorn, and the news that one of their players has been sent for surgery following an injury. This is the part of the football year — deep in the second half of the home-and-away season, finals looming — where the surgical calendar starts filling up fast, and clubs start doing cold-eyed calculations about who is worth rushing back and who is better off getting the repair done now and starting their pre-season early.

The Hawks, to their credit, have had a more competitive season than a lot of people expected given where they were eighteen months ago when the trade table looked like a demolition site. Sam Mitchell has that club pointing in the right direction and they’ve shown genuine fight in contests this year. Losing a player to surgery at this point in the campaign is a blow, but given the trajectory they’re on, it might be one they can absorb in a “take the long view” kind of way.

That’s the thing about clubs that are genuinely building — and I say this not to be patronising but because I know what it looks like from the inside, having watched Carlton do it very badly for the better part of fifteen years — the surgery news stings less when you’ve already mentally banked the idea that this year is about process as much as results.

\h2>What September Looks Like Without Cameron

Even without Cameron fully fit, Geelong has the cattle to make noise in September. Dangerfield when he’s on song is still one of the most devastating ball-users in the competition. The back six is experienced and composed. And Chris Scott, whatever your feelings about his occasionally baffling in-game decisions — and I’ve had a few colourful opinions about those over the years — Chris Scott knows how to prepare a team for finals football.

The question mark, if there is one, is whether Geelong has the absolute ceiling required to go all the way without their key forward at his best, given that Collingwood and Brisbane and a couple of others are going to take some serious beating in a final-four scenario. Cameron at seventy per cent is probably still better than most clubs’ alternatives at full noise, but seventy per cent of a shoulder injury victim is still a shoulder injury victim, and defenders know exactly where to apply pressure when a bloke is protecting something.

The Broader Injury Toll Is Becoming a Real Conversation

I know I risk sounding like the bloke at the end of the bar who blames everything on the modern game — and look, maybe I am that bloke, I’ve made peace with it — but the sheer volume of significant injuries we’re seeing deep in seasons is worth at least raising an eyebrow at. Congested schedules, relentless interstate travel, the physical demands of the contested style that’s now dominant across the competition… something’s adding up somewhere, and it’s showing up on the surgical table.

I’m not saying it was better when blokes played on mudheaps and ate a pie at half-time. I’m saying it’s worth asking whether the people running this competition have done the sums on workload and body breakdown, or whether they’re just crossing their fingers and hoping the medical departments keep up with the pace they’re setting.

The Bottom Line

Jeremy Cameron will do everything in his power to get back for Geelong’s finals campaign, and if he does, the Cats go from serious contenders to frightening ones. The Hawthorn surgery news is a reminder that no club gets through a season unscathed, and that September — always September — sorts out the ones who’ve managed their list the smartest from the ones who’ve just been hoping for the best.

As for Carlton, we’re managing our list very smartly indeed. Very smartly. We’ll leave it there.