“The more I travel, the more I realise how much is out there. If I wasn’t playing footy I’d probably go backpacking.”
So says Cameron Wood, Carlton footballer and passionate trekker, on the end of his most recent foray into the United States and Canada.
For Wood, this was his sixth North American sojourn, broken only by a South American venture this time last year, which took in such locales as Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Argentina.
The big bloke’s most recent 24-day jaunt included a catch up with an old pal from Brisbane, Scott Harding, a receiver/punter for the University of Hawaii who scored two touchdowns for the visitors against Houston in “Space City” as Wood watched on from the stands.
By then he’d taken a couple of bites of the Big Apple, having fronted for an ice hockey pre-season game between New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers at Madison Square Garden, and a show on Broadway – crossing paths with a couple of Aussies in the process.
What happened in that exchange brought back horrid memories for Wood of the Round 19 match against Fremantle at Patersons Stadium.
Cameron takes up the story.
After spending some time in Toronto I headed to New York. The playoffs were on by then and I would have loved to have seen (Yankees shortstop) Derek Jeter’s final games, but the logistics would have been all out of whack and it just didn’t happen.
However, I did manage to see an ice hockey game there and I caught up with “Murph” (Marc Murphy). I also took in The Lion King show on Broadway and I’ll tell you a funny story about that.
Cameron Wood took in an ice hockey game with skipper Marc Murphy at Madison Square Garden. (Photo: Supplied)
I’ve rocked up to The Lion King and taken my seat when two 40 year-old women took up the seats next to me. They started talking to eachother and I picked up the Aussie accent, so I started up a conversation saying: “Are you guys from Australia?” - and when they told me they were I replied “Oh, I’m from Melbourne”.
They told me they were both from Perth and then said: “Gee you’re tall, do you play football?”. I said yeah, then asked them who they barracked for, and they replied “Fremantle”.
Thinking back to that Freo game I started dropping hints a couple of times, along the lines of “Did you go to that Freo game?”. One of them replied, “Yeah, good game, lucky to get the win – bad luck for Carlton wasn’t it?” I didn’t buy into it, but about ten minutes later, just before the show was about to start, one of the ladies piped up with “You don’t play for Carlton do you?”
I said “Yeah”, and she said “Are you the guy that stuffed the kick in the last minute? And when I said yeah she replied “Oh, I feel bad now”.
Small world.
