Neville Stibbard would love to tell you a long and complicated story of how he saw things in a young Jeremy Cameron that no other AFL recruiter was able to pick up on.

But he’s too honest for that.

“I’d love to claim him, I really would,” he said. “But your grandmother could have picked him.”

Back in 2011, Stibbard was the GIANTS’ recruiting manager, piecing together a large part of the original list.

As part of the initial draft concessions, the club was able to prelist teenagers by the end of 2010 – kids who had turned 17 in the first four months of that year.

Stibbard had a few names already in mind when he turned up to watch an early season game in Ballarat: Dylan Shiel, Adam Treloar, Jack Hombsch and Nathan Wilson among    them.

He had no idea who Cameron was or where he had come from, and he wasn’t alone. The teenager had kicked plenty of goals playing back home in Dartmoor, debuting in the senior team at just 14 and resisting his friends’ pleas to come and play juniors with them in Heywood where he might have been noticed by more people.

He had missed most of the 2008 season after breaking his wrist. He hadn’t been part of the North Ballarat junior squads, or experienced any representative football by then. And he had grown up feeling happier on the golf course than the footy field: footy was more for fun.

“I remember by quarter time I was looking at the team list thinking: Jeremy Cameron? Who is Jeremy Cameron?” said Stibbard.

“I wish I could remember which game it was, and who was playing who, but after it was over I went right back through my notes from the under-15s and under-16s thinking, have we missed him?

“I was ready to sign him by half time. I’d already decided. He was just so talented. He dominated the air, and he kicked the ball really well. He was so good it wasn’t funny.

“We were just lucky he was the right age for us to sign, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he wasn’t. I would have taken him with pick one in the draft the next year, he was that good.”

Cameron was raw, really raw. He had never even been to see an AFL game played live. He joined the North Ballarat Rebels for the 2010 season, and looked better and better by the week, despite having to travel hour and hours to train, play and get home to his small town.

Stibbard had already convinced Jason McCartney – then the AFL Academy coach, now the GIANTS’ head of football – to add him to the elite national talent squad too.

“He was so talented and so athletic, but he just had no idea about what it was going to take and what he needed to do to become a professional football player,” Stibbard said.

There was another reason to get him involved: it was as part of that squad that Cameron came across Stephen Coniglio, Lachie Whitfield, Matt Buntine, Devon Smith, Adam Tomlinson and some other future teammates for the first time.

“That was a really good thing for him to do, and it was also good because all those kids got to know each other a long time before we ended up drafting them,” Stibbard said.

“A lot of them knew each other by the time they moved up to Sydney and I think that’s something that helped all of them settle in and not feel too out of place up there.

“They didn’t have to start over, they’d already spent a fair bit of time with each other.”

The GIANTS let Cameron just have fun and play for most of his 17^th year, before Stibbard and Alan McConnell caught a plane to Mount Gambier then drove out to Dartmoor to meet Cameron properly, spend some time with his parents and let them know they’d be taking him.

“It was all still really new to them. The AFL Academy, the TAC Cup, and then we went up and said: we’re going to sign him up and we’re going to move him to Sydney,” Stibbard said.

“We explained what it was all about and they started to realise, hang on, this is getting pretty serious. I don’t they had thought before then that this could really be a career for him.

“They were just nice people, and Jeremy was just a county bumpkin, a really good young kid. I could tell instantly he was an honest kid who would just do his best no matter what he tried, and I think by then he had embraced the game and really started to fall in love with it.

“He was quite competitive and he really wanted to be good. That’s what I remember about him the most even back then. It was built into him, and that’s what we were looking for.

“He was an easy one. Really easy. It was exhilarating to be honest, watching him play that first day.

“I was so excited to watch him play and think that we could get him. I couldn’t wait to drive home and get on the phone, ring people and tell them all about him.”

There was just one little hiccup, before it all became official.

“I remember we’d said to Jeremy and said to his mum and dad, keep this visit really quiet. It was obvious we’d be taking him but we didn’t want everyone knowing that we were going there to see him,” Stibbard said.

“We had the meeting then drove down to the pub and by the time we got there the place was full and everyone wanted to come over and meet us and find out about us.

“Everybody in town had a counter lunch that day I reckon, it was amazing. Everybody knew him, they loved the kid. There was no way it was staying a secret in Dartmoor after that.”

The GIANTS would like to thank the Herald Sun and the Age for use of images for this piece.