- Mar 30, 2013
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If he could only take contested marks like Fyfe and if Fyfe could kick like Mcarthy.
Welcome Cam McCarthy - Welcome to Freo!
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Just leave him in the ****ing team ffs. He has the most natural goal sense of all our forwards.
I've said it before, Lobb Hogan McCarthy is our best forward set up.
We should be using them for the rest of the year to let them gel
I've said it before, Lobb Hogan McCarthy is our best forward set up.
We should be using them for the rest of the year to let them gel
- Sep 13, 2016
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Dardy is just a good old fashioned footballer. If he’s in the 50, he’s having a shot. No fuss about it. Just slots them.
- Jul 9, 2010
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I just want a coach who singles him out, has a quick, 'come on mate, what's going on?' when he's had a bad quarter.
There's something weirdly endearing about a bogan from North Coogee who's a bit overweight, has a stupid haircut, and doesn't suit the tattoos he's got. Maybe that's it. I hope he kicks about five when we wear that original jumper later this year.
There's something weirdly endearing about a bogan from North Coogee who's a bit overweight, has a stupid haircut, and doesn't suit the tattoos he's got. Maybe that's it. I hope he kicks about five when we wear that original jumper later this year.
Tell you what, the way you describe him there he sounds more and more like Thor himself.
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- #681
Evening all. I was so impressed with his kicking yesterday, never really got the hype at gas and tbh haven't seen too many of his games at freo. Just looked like kicking them from everywhere and drop punts too.
Good luck for the rest of the year.
Nothing old fashioned about Cam that’s for sure!
They never lead away from the player with the ball in the old days for starters.
- Sep 13, 2016
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Yes perhaps not in that respect
. I more meant that he’s not an “athlete” that plays football, he’s just a footy player. Got good skills, usually makes a decent decision with ball in hand and can dab a goal outside 50. Good kicking action too. The mental side is where it can fall down for Dards. That’s when he does dumb and lazy things like looking for a cheapie out the back instead of leading up.
Stuart88
Team Captain
- May 10, 2014
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Hearing some very sad rumours that Cam has died. Don't know what from. Still hoping they aren't true but it's coming from more than one place so not looking good.
We haven't had a good run with ex-players recently
We haven't had a good run with ex-players recently
Stuart88
Team Captain
- May 10, 2014
- 492
- 571
- AFL Club
- Fremantle
- Other Teams
- Chelsea
Yeah, just seen it's in the media now. Tragic
- Aug 25, 2011
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So sad. 
- Aug 17, 2009
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That really sucks, seemed like a ripping bloke.
- May 3, 2007
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I heard it on the radio while I was driving, Sad to hear this.
Hello Freo friends and good luck tomorrow - not trying to cause any trouble here, just to pay my respects.
I really rated Cam on potential from what I saw of him. Here is an article all should read ........ peace.
www.theguardian.com
I really rated Cam on potential from what I saw of him. Here is an article all should read ........ peace.
Remembering Cam McCarthy goes beyond black armbands and bouquets | Jonathan Horn
The former AFL player was known to mates and Dockers supporters as ‘Dardy McCrafty’ and embraced being ‘a bit of a weirdo’
Last edited:
Here is another from today's Saturday Paper ..........
Cam McCarthy in action for Fremantle in 2017. CREDIT: PAUL KANE / GETTY IMAGES
There was a story Cam McCarthy liked telling, about his first year as a teenage recruit for Greater Western Sydney. He was waiting with his team for their coach, Leon Cameron, to arrive and begin their club meeting – McCarthy’s first. Cameron had been delayed, and someone suggested one of the boys share a joke to pass the time.
McCarthy was tempted, but he was a kid, hadn’t played a game yet, and a private voice suggested he know his place and stay quiet. A joke was risky: his teammates didn’t know him well enough for him to venture his idiosyncrasy through a gag.
It was the other voice that prevailed. The voice that encouraged him to say “yes” to things. The voice that encouraged him to be himself. And so, as the team waited for their coach, the kid recruit put his hand up and said, “Yeah, I know one.”
I want to share the joke with you. First, because it’s great. Second, because it reveals something more interesting and human than the fact Cam McCarthy kicked 99 AFL goals for two clubs.
I’ll paraphrase a little: a koala’s sitting in a tree smoking a giant doobie. It’s as long as his arm; impeccably rolled. There’s a thick and pungent cloud about him. Down below, a small lizard strolls past. “Geez, that’s a colossal reefer,” the lizard says admiringly.
“Come up and share some, mate,” the koala says.
So the lizard does, and the two of them congenially take turns on the jazz flute. Eyes blazing, they get deep on astrology. They admire the view.
Suddenly, the lizard realises he’s seriously parched.
“Get down to the river, mate, have a drink, and then come back,” the koala suggests.
The lizard reckons that’s a great idea. So he scurries down the tree, heads to the river, and while he’s enjoying a drink there, a huge croc appears. “Your eyes are glowing, cobber,” the croc says to the lizard.
“Buddy, there’s a koala in that tree over there with the biggest spliff you’ve ever seen. And I reckon he’d be happy to share it with you.”
The croc thanks the lizard for the advice and heads over to the koala’s tree. The koala looks down, sees the croc, and says: “****, Lizard Boy, how much water did you drink?”
This is where McCarthy’s new teammates should’ve erupted with laughter. Instead, there were crickets. No one laughed, though plenty looked confused. McCarthy winced.
Cam McCarthy preferred cricket as a kid but came to love footy. He was born the same day the Fremantle Dockers played their first game, a five-point loss to Richmond. His dad took him to Freo games and brought a stool he’d made at home so his young boy could see above the boundary fence. Young Cam came to idolise Matthew Pavlich.
McCarthy left school at 16 and became an apprentice plumber. He was then playing for South Fremantle’s Colts, the club’s juniors. Less than a year later he was recruited by an AFL club – the new GWS Giants – and found himself on the other side of the country, billeted in Breakfast Point in Sydney’s west.
Is there a finer first kick in the history of the AFL? In 2014, against the Western Bulldogs in the season’s final round, McCarthy came on as a late substitute and marked in the forward pocket. Teammates, assuming a kick for goal impossible at such a fine angle – and from a teenager yet to even kick a ball in an AFL match – gestured for a centring kick. McCarthy nodded affirmatively but insincerely. He was gonna have a crack. Remarkably, he scored a goal and later he said it felt like he was floating.
But McCarthy was troubled. He was homesick, for one, struggling without his parents. And as a forward with Jonathon Patton, Tom Boyd and Jeremy Cameron also in the squad, McCarthy wondered if he’d ever get a regular game.
The Giants had borrowed an idea from American colleges – instead of having their interstate recruits live with host families, the club leased a block of glamorous apartments in Breakfast Point and had the boys room together under the eye of a local family who could be called upon for domestic help or a sympathetic ear. The fledgling club was trying to head off attrition when most of its players came from afar, but the set-up could feel suffocating to McCarthy: it was footy, always, when you lived with your teammates.
The following year was better. In 2015, he played 20 games, kicked 35 goals – his most in any of his seven AFL seasons. He was a good mark and often fearless in attempting them. Still, he often wondered if he was good enough. His confidence fluctuated. McCarthy remained homesick, disoriented and often severely depressed. He wanted a trade back home to Perth. GWS refused. Exhausted and anxious, McCarthy sat out the whole of the 2016 season. At the end of it, GWS finally agreed to his trade request.
McCarthy was a Docker. Later he would say it was “surreal” joining the club he’d watched with his dad as a boy. He kicked 25 goals in his first season for them – the club’s most that year. He was inconsistent but often exciting. He was also loose, cheeky, profane. Some described him as weird, and he loved it when they did. McCarthy was a ratbag in the best possible sense, modest and generous with his time. He was far from conceited and he became a fan favourite – a kind of larrikin mascot. The nickname Dardy McCrafty stuck.
Privately, though, he was concealing serious depression and sometimes acute doubts about his ability. Like many players, he hated that so many strangers had such passionate opinions about his character. He was jolted when he picked up certain editions of the newspaper, but he could also make jokes about entering a servo to pay for petrol and while there reading of a stranger’s insistence that he be sacked immediately.
His form declined. He could be racked with ambivalence. He loved footy, but did he love it enough? Did he love it with the same unbending devotion he saw in others? Footy could be a thrill, a rare privilege – as when the crowd chanted his name after a cheeky banana, or when he was the beneficiary of some more David Mundy magic. But the game could also be a source of anxiety, doubt, media caricatures. It could be a grind.
In 2020, McCarthy collapsed during training. An ambulance was called. Later, he was diagnosed with epilepsy. He would be medically declared fit to continue his career, but his ailing form had already decided the matter for his club. That year, Fremantle declined to renew his contract. In interviews, McCarthy spoke of his desire to play footy for South Freo in the WAFL, and to plot his return to the AFL with another club. As it was, he’d played his last game in the big league. His career was over at the age of 25. Over seven (but really six) seasons, he scored 99 goals in 70 games.
McCarthy drifted. He would later say of this period that he felt like a loser, that he had no purpose, that the depression worsened. He said he’d look in the mirror and dislike the person he saw.
He needed a change and, for this very sociable bloke, he sought temporary isolation. He drove down south and stayed on a farm. He wanted to reflect, to shake himself free from his rut. He drove a lot, often to beaches, where he’d sit and cry. He thought about “everything I’ve ****ed up in my life”. He thought about the “hectic bullshit” he’d put his family through. He would also say of that three-week trip to the country that he realised he’d barely acknowledged, much less celebrated, his achievements. He wanted to correct that. To better hold the sum of his failures and achievements. It was true: Dardy McCrafty had done lots of cool things.
McCarthy returned to Perth. He felt he’d turned a corner. He resumed his old trade, this time as an industrial plumber. He told his family he loved them. He told daft jokes, he embraced his vulnerability. He regained a sense of purpose.
Last week, emergency services were called to a home in Perth and McCarthy was found dead. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances. McCarthy’s death, at 29, was the third from the 2017 Dockers squad. All were under 30 when they died.
Only hours after hearing the news, Fremantle played Sydney in Perth. Eleven members of the current team played with McCarthy. Captain Alex Pearce was a close friend. The sides stood arm in arm at each end of the ground before the first bounce as a photo of McCarthy was shown onscreen. They wept. After the game, Pearce and former captain Nat Fyfe laid a wreath of flowers in the goal square.
In many newspaper reports, the life of Cam McCarthy was reduced to some bloodless stats and a quote. But Pearce and Fyfe – and so many others – weren’t thinking about the stats, rather the often charming man who struggled and strove. The man who tried to say “yes”.
Lifeline 13 11 14
Cam McCarthy: The man who tried to say ‘yes’
By Martin McKenzie-Murray.
Cam McCarthy in action for Fremantle in 2017. CREDIT: PAUL KANE / GETTY IMAGES
There was a story Cam McCarthy liked telling, about his first year as a teenage recruit for Greater Western Sydney. He was waiting with his team for their coach, Leon Cameron, to arrive and begin their club meeting – McCarthy’s first. Cameron had been delayed, and someone suggested one of the boys share a joke to pass the time.
McCarthy was tempted, but he was a kid, hadn’t played a game yet, and a private voice suggested he know his place and stay quiet. A joke was risky: his teammates didn’t know him well enough for him to venture his idiosyncrasy through a gag.
It was the other voice that prevailed. The voice that encouraged him to say “yes” to things. The voice that encouraged him to be himself. And so, as the team waited for their coach, the kid recruit put his hand up and said, “Yeah, I know one.”
I want to share the joke with you. First, because it’s great. Second, because it reveals something more interesting and human than the fact Cam McCarthy kicked 99 AFL goals for two clubs.
I’ll paraphrase a little: a koala’s sitting in a tree smoking a giant doobie. It’s as long as his arm; impeccably rolled. There’s a thick and pungent cloud about him. Down below, a small lizard strolls past. “Geez, that’s a colossal reefer,” the lizard says admiringly.
“Come up and share some, mate,” the koala says.
So the lizard does, and the two of them congenially take turns on the jazz flute. Eyes blazing, they get deep on astrology. They admire the view.
Suddenly, the lizard realises he’s seriously parched.
“Get down to the river, mate, have a drink, and then come back,” the koala suggests.
The lizard reckons that’s a great idea. So he scurries down the tree, heads to the river, and while he’s enjoying a drink there, a huge croc appears. “Your eyes are glowing, cobber,” the croc says to the lizard.
“Buddy, there’s a koala in that tree over there with the biggest spliff you’ve ever seen. And I reckon he’d be happy to share it with you.”
The croc thanks the lizard for the advice and heads over to the koala’s tree. The koala looks down, sees the croc, and says: “****, Lizard Boy, how much water did you drink?”
This is where McCarthy’s new teammates should’ve erupted with laughter. Instead, there were crickets. No one laughed, though plenty looked confused. McCarthy winced.
Cam McCarthy preferred cricket as a kid but came to love footy. He was born the same day the Fremantle Dockers played their first game, a five-point loss to Richmond. His dad took him to Freo games and brought a stool he’d made at home so his young boy could see above the boundary fence. Young Cam came to idolise Matthew Pavlich.
McCarthy left school at 16 and became an apprentice plumber. He was then playing for South Fremantle’s Colts, the club’s juniors. Less than a year later he was recruited by an AFL club – the new GWS Giants – and found himself on the other side of the country, billeted in Breakfast Point in Sydney’s west.
Is there a finer first kick in the history of the AFL? In 2014, against the Western Bulldogs in the season’s final round, McCarthy came on as a late substitute and marked in the forward pocket. Teammates, assuming a kick for goal impossible at such a fine angle – and from a teenager yet to even kick a ball in an AFL match – gestured for a centring kick. McCarthy nodded affirmatively but insincerely. He was gonna have a crack. Remarkably, he scored a goal and later he said it felt like he was floating.
But McCarthy was troubled. He was homesick, for one, struggling without his parents. And as a forward with Jonathon Patton, Tom Boyd and Jeremy Cameron also in the squad, McCarthy wondered if he’d ever get a regular game.
The Giants had borrowed an idea from American colleges – instead of having their interstate recruits live with host families, the club leased a block of glamorous apartments in Breakfast Point and had the boys room together under the eye of a local family who could be called upon for domestic help or a sympathetic ear. The fledgling club was trying to head off attrition when most of its players came from afar, but the set-up could feel suffocating to McCarthy: it was footy, always, when you lived with your teammates.
The following year was better. In 2015, he played 20 games, kicked 35 goals – his most in any of his seven AFL seasons. He was a good mark and often fearless in attempting them. Still, he often wondered if he was good enough. His confidence fluctuated. McCarthy remained homesick, disoriented and often severely depressed. He wanted a trade back home to Perth. GWS refused. Exhausted and anxious, McCarthy sat out the whole of the 2016 season. At the end of it, GWS finally agreed to his trade request.
McCarthy was a Docker. Later he would say it was “surreal” joining the club he’d watched with his dad as a boy. He kicked 25 goals in his first season for them – the club’s most that year. He was inconsistent but often exciting. He was also loose, cheeky, profane. Some described him as weird, and he loved it when they did. McCarthy was a ratbag in the best possible sense, modest and generous with his time. He was far from conceited and he became a fan favourite – a kind of larrikin mascot. The nickname Dardy McCrafty stuck.
Privately, though, he was concealing serious depression and sometimes acute doubts about his ability. Like many players, he hated that so many strangers had such passionate opinions about his character. He was jolted when he picked up certain editions of the newspaper, but he could also make jokes about entering a servo to pay for petrol and while there reading of a stranger’s insistence that he be sacked immediately.
His form declined. He could be racked with ambivalence. He loved footy, but did he love it enough? Did he love it with the same unbending devotion he saw in others? Footy could be a thrill, a rare privilege – as when the crowd chanted his name after a cheeky banana, or when he was the beneficiary of some more David Mundy magic. But the game could also be a source of anxiety, doubt, media caricatures. It could be a grind.
In 2020, McCarthy collapsed during training. An ambulance was called. Later, he was diagnosed with epilepsy. He would be medically declared fit to continue his career, but his ailing form had already decided the matter for his club. That year, Fremantle declined to renew his contract. In interviews, McCarthy spoke of his desire to play footy for South Freo in the WAFL, and to plot his return to the AFL with another club. As it was, he’d played his last game in the big league. His career was over at the age of 25. Over seven (but really six) seasons, he scored 99 goals in 70 games.
McCarthy drifted. He would later say of this period that he felt like a loser, that he had no purpose, that the depression worsened. He said he’d look in the mirror and dislike the person he saw.
He needed a change and, for this very sociable bloke, he sought temporary isolation. He drove down south and stayed on a farm. He wanted to reflect, to shake himself free from his rut. He drove a lot, often to beaches, where he’d sit and cry. He thought about “everything I’ve ****ed up in my life”. He thought about the “hectic bullshit” he’d put his family through. He would also say of that three-week trip to the country that he realised he’d barely acknowledged, much less celebrated, his achievements. He wanted to correct that. To better hold the sum of his failures and achievements. It was true: Dardy McCrafty had done lots of cool things.
McCarthy returned to Perth. He felt he’d turned a corner. He resumed his old trade, this time as an industrial plumber. He told his family he loved them. He told daft jokes, he embraced his vulnerability. He regained a sense of purpose.
Last week, emergency services were called to a home in Perth and McCarthy was found dead. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances. McCarthy’s death, at 29, was the third from the 2017 Dockers squad. All were under 30 when they died.
Only hours after hearing the news, Fremantle played Sydney in Perth. Eleven members of the current team played with McCarthy. Captain Alex Pearce was a close friend. The sides stood arm in arm at each end of the ground before the first bounce as a photo of McCarthy was shown onscreen. They wept. After the game, Pearce and former captain Nat Fyfe laid a wreath of flowers in the goal square.
In many newspaper reports, the life of Cam McCarthy was reduced to some bloodless stats and a quote. But Pearce and Fyfe – and so many others – weren’t thinking about the stats, rather the often charming man who struggled and strove. The man who tried to say “yes”.
Lifeline 13 11 14
