Young Man In A Hurry (not Just In A Car)

The Age

Thursday June 17, 2004

Emma Quayle

Cameron Cloke's speeding strife was a wake-up call for a player who doesn't show lip or cheek so much as tongue. Emma Quayle reports from Mooloolaba.

Cameron Cloke respects authority, but not too much. The Collingwood player was lining up for a centre bounce against the more experienced Leigh Brown a few weeks back when he stuck out his tongue and wiggled it around like a lizard.

``We'd been going up in the ruck and he was being really serious, so I thought I'd try to get him off-track a bit and do some stupid things in the ruck to put him off," said Cloke yesterday.

``He started looking at me thinking, `What the hell is this guy doing?' I got a couple of hit-outs after that so it must have worked, but it was just a bit of fun.

``I didn't think the cameras would get it, but it was on the news all week and my mates were all sending messages through saying, `What were you thinking?' I just thought, `Oh well, it looked a bit stupid, but you've got to enjoy playing footy."

That said, Cloke was seriously worried the morning after that match. The 19-year-old was on his way to a Sunday recovery session at McHale Stadium, and running very late, when police clocked him driving at 144km/h down the Eastern Freeway and asked him to pull over.

The teenager was fined $5000 by his TAC-sponsored club. In a little over a week, he will hand back his driver's licence for the next six months and rely on his parents, brother Jason and girlfriend Claire to cart him around.

Cloke did not feel comfortable discussing the predicament his club has been placed in since he sped, but he knows two things - how lucky he was not to hurt himself or someone else, and that he does not like being in trouble with the police.

``I'm still driving at the moment and it definitely changes you. I was given 28 days to drive after it happened and that's almost good because I'm careful for every single second and I'm always watching how fast I'm going," Cloke said.

``It's pretty scary, getting pulled over by the police. You probably take your licence for granted a bit when you're young and now I have to realise what I've done and make sure I watch how fast I'm going and how safe I drive all the time.

``That's the way you should always be and I should have known, but I made a mistake and I didn't think about what I was doing. It was something stupid that I did and I wish I could take it back, but I can't and I'm going to have to move on and try to learn something from it now."

On the field, he is also behaving more thoughtfully. Named an emergency for Collingwood's final-round match against Essendon last year was disappointing in a so-close-but-so-far sort of way, because Cloke knew he would not be blooded in the finals.

At the same time, it said to him a senior career was there to be grabbed, and so Cloke challenged himself over pre-season to shaving centimetres off his skinfolds and seconds off his time-trial record, even though Jason could not push him. ``He missed out on the time trials because he was a bit injured, but I still want to beat him at everything we do," he said.

``I went into this year thinking, `This is my year; I want it to be my year.' I nearly got there last year so I did everything I could to make sure I got there."

Cloke was not slipped into the Magpies side; he made his debut against the Bombers, but on Anzac Day. ``I thought I'd get really nervous, but I wasn't," he said. ``Out on the field I just wanted it all to start. We were standing there for the national anthem and I was thinking, `Let's just get into it'."

He took that approach to the opposition, too, putting Mark Bolton on his backside when the Essendon defender ran to bump him. ``I was a first-gamer so I think he was trying to rough me up a bit, but I just turned and put him down," Cloke said. ``I think I was still a bit more shocked than him, but I didn't want him to try to run through me. I didn't know what was going on, really, but it was a little incident and it was just a bit of a laugh."

Still, Cloke has carried a deliberate physicality into every game since, partly because he does not want opposition players to think he can be pushed around, and also because he wants to be just like the players trying to harass him. He loves how teammates Chris Tarrant and Anthony Rocca ``don't get moved, they do the moving," and enjoyed lining up on Glenn Archer.

``I wasn't too afraid of him. Everyone says how scary he is, but I've watched him play for a long time and I reckon he's just a great footballer," Cloke said.

``The way he's so hard at the ball is awesome and I want to get like that and have no fear. He's not scared about anything and I just figured, `If he's going to hit me, then I'm just going to have to get up'.

``If you hold your ground and make the opposition think about you, I think they respect you a bit more. You just have to hold your ground . . . it doesn't matter how old you are."

© 2004 The Age

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