It wasn’t until the third quarter of the club’s second game against North Melbourne in Hobart that he even got on the scoreboard. His first goal was the new club’s seventh.
But Jeremy Cameron’s extended wait was nothing more than a short-term statistical tease.
By the end of that quarter he’d kicked three, and by the final siren had bagged a fourth.
For the historically minded, he got the Giants 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th goals, and has made a one-horse race of the club goal-kicking ever since.
The boom youngster from the tiny rural town of Dartmoor on the Princes Highway in south-western Victoria has played an extraordinarily dominant role in the GIANTS’ goal-kicking. Even more so than the most dominant forwards in the game.
Last year, when Hawthorn’s Jarryd Roughead won the Coleman Medal in a premiership side he kicked 17.4% of his side’s goals.
In 2012, when Richmond’s Jack Riewoldt topped the League goal-kicking, he kicked 20.9% of his side’s goals.
Neither player missed a game.
When Hawthorn’s Lance Franklin was the No.1 goal-kicker in the competition in 2011 despite missing two games he kicked 18.4% of his side’s goals. And 20.6% of Hawthorn goals in games in which he played.
Cameron, has kicked 22.2% of the entire GIANTS goal tally. And 25% of goals in game in which he’s played.
The 21-year-old 41-gamer, who won All-Australian selection last year in just his second season, is in rare company. Very rare.
So much so that when he kicked his historic 100th goal for the GIANTS against the Western Bulldogs in Canberra last Saturday his closest GWS rivals were Jonathan Giles (37) and Devon Smith (33). Adam Treloar (22) and Callan Ward (20) are the only other GIANTS to reach 20 goals for the club.
Cameron has been the GIANTS' leading goal-kicker 27 times in 41 games (including ties) - eight out of 16 games in 2012, 16 of 21 last year and three of four this year.
At the same time the leading goal-kicker at the Gold Coast Suns, their expansion colleagues, was Gary Ablett with 78. And he’d played a full extra season and 24 more games.
Cameron, 21 days beyond his 21st birthday when he posted his AFL ton, even fares more than favourably in century comparisons alongside the AFL’s top-10 goal-kickers all-time.
Tony Lockett, the great St Kilda and Sydney full forward who leads the all-time goal-kicking list with 1360 goals, was 35 games to get to 100 and was 19 years 36 days. He was the only teenager in this elite group to reach 100.
Gordon Coventry, the Collingwood legend who started in the 1920s and sits No.2 on the all-time list, kicked his 100th goal in his 46th game aged 21 years 348 days.
Hawthorn champion Jason Dunstall, No.3 all-time, was 35 games getting to 100 goals at 22 years 16 days.
Doug Wade, the Geelong champion who ranks No.4 all-time, was quickest of the top 10 to 100 goals, reaching triple figures in just his 29th game. But even he was not a lot younger than Cameron at 20 years 285 days.
Geelong’s Gary Ablett Snr, No.5 goal-kicker all-time, needed 37 games to reach 100 goals and was almost 24, while Richmond’s Jack Titus, No.6 all-time, took 41 games and was just past 22.
Essendon’s Matthew Lloyd, No.7 all-time, was another who took 41 games to reach 100 goals and was just beyond his 20th birthday, while Hawthorn legend Leigh Matthews, No.8 all-time despite starting his career as a rover, took 59 games and was 20 years 144 days.
Collingwood’s Peter McKenna, No.9 all-time, took 40 games and was almost 22, and Bernie Quinlan, who split his career between Fitzroy and Footscray and rounds out the top 10 goal-kickers all-time, took 65 games and was almost 21.
There have been others quicker and younger than Cameron, but it is undeniable that as far as goal-kicking apprenticeships go his is right up with the very best. And that playing with an expansion club which won just five of the 41 games he took to reach what promises to be the first of many tons.
The standout individual number in Cameron’s century was the career-best seven goals he kicked against Collingwood in Round 18 last year. It was also his most dominant display - he kicked an astonishing 70% of his side’s goals that day.
Next best was six goals against Essendon in Round 6 last year, when he kicked half the GIANTS’ goals.
The most goals he has kicked in a quarter has been four - in the first quarter against Collingwood on his way to a career-best seven. He kicked the GIANTS’ only four first-quarter goals that day, plus the first goal of the second quarter for five in a row.
A more detailed forensic analysis of the Cameron ton shows the following:
In 41 games he kicked seven, six and five goals once each, and kicked four goals seven times. He kicked three goals 11 times, two goals eight times, and one goal six times.
He’s kicked most goals against Essendon (13), Western Bulldogs (11) and Melbourne (10).
Six times he’s kicked 50% of more of the GIANTS’ goals, nine times he’s kicked 40% or more, and 13 times - or almost a third of the games in which he’s played - he’s kicked 30% or more.
He’s kicked multiple goals in a quarter 19 times - 15 doubles, three triples and his four. Next best is Giles (five doubles) and Smith (three doubles and a triple).
Only six times has he been held goalless - and five of them were in his first 13 games.
His clean sheets came against Sydney (game 1), West Coast (game 3), Brisbane (game 6), Hawthorn (game 12), Adelaide (game 13) and Richmond (game 36).
