Shadowed by the colossus of the Great Southern Stand, respected Carlton administrator Shane O’Sullivan stood with his newest recruit and stared out at the expanse before them. The fresh-faced teenager from Adelaide next to him had only recently arrived for an induction weekend, having been snapped up with pick 15 in the 1994 AFL draft.
“Have you ever been to the MCG?” O’Sullivan had asked the kid on his first day at Princes Park. The answer was a definitive no. The intimidating bustle of Melbourne — painted in its greys and beiges and blacks, and soundtracked by the din of the trams and the never-ending traffic — was a world away from the charming tranquillity of Woodville Oval in the suburbs of the South Australian capital.
Part of Shane O’Sullivan’s job in 1995 was to integrate the new players into the Carlton system and show them the ropes. Integration meant controlling intimidation. And few things were more intimidating than the ‘G.
“Round one we’ll be playing Collingwood here, mate,” O’Sullivan said to the kid as they cast their eyes over the thousands of empty seats. “There’s probably gonna be about 85,000 people. You reckon you’d like playing in front of that?”
The kid nodded. He wasn’t convinced it would happen — this was a Carlton side packed with generational talent after all — but he knew he wanted it. Confidence, lacking in some new arrivals, was not an issue for Scott Camporeale. He had it in spades.
The Road to a Debut
Just weeks later, on April 2, 1995, the 19-year-old pulled on the number 16 navy blue guernsey for the first time and ran up the race onto the MCG in front of 87,119 screaming supporters. By the end of the season, the kid from Woodville-West Torrens would write himself into the history books as a Carlton legend.
Five players debuted for Carlton in 1995, but Camporeale was the only one that had been brought in via that season’s national draft. Held on October 28 of 1994, the draft was far from today’s glamorous, controlled show of mums kissing sons and dads shedding tears.
“I was actually sitting in a trade school exam at Regency Park back here in Adelaide when it was happening,” Camporeale says. “Carlton was one of the teams I hadn’t spoken to at all. I thought I was going to Melbourne. Neil Balme was the coach there and he’d been coach at Woodville-West Torrens, so he’d seen me through the juniors.”
The Blues had swooped on Camporeale with their first pick at number 15, undercutting the Demons, who ended up having to take current Richmond coach Adem Yze with the very next pick.
Integrating into a Powerhouse
Still on the cusp of full professionalism, the AFL remained a flimsy career path for anyone who came to it without a back-up plan. For Camporeale, that plan was seeing out what he had started in the exam room on draft day.
“I was doing an electrician’s apprenticeship so I couldn’t move over straight away,” he says. “I was training here and there and flew over on a couple of occasions, but it wasn’t until after the Christmas break that I properly moved to Melbourne.”
It was then that ‘Campo’ integrated himself into one of the most intimidating Blues squads in the history of the game. For Carlton, the seven seasons from their 1987 premiership victory to the start of 1995 had been a mixed bag of close but no cigar, or no cigar offered at all.
“To turn up at the club and have Steve Kernahan as your captain. Craig Bradley was there. Andrew McKay, he was a big brother to me when I arrived,” Camporeale says.
Through the pre-season, coach David Parkin had been running match simulations between two squads. In the blue training guernsey, the “probables” — the blokes most likely to take on Collingwood in that opening match. And in the white, the “possibles” — a mix of players on the brink of arriving, and those who had barely left the house.
“I was on the ‘possible’ team for most of the preseason, but I remember it clearly, I played one match simulation for the ‘possibles’ on the wing and I played really well,” Camporeale says. “So the next training session I have a look at the whiteboard and I’ve been flipped to the other side.”
Debut Day: A Dream Realized
Deafening. That’s the one common adjective used between Clape and Camporeale when describing that first game against Collingwood.
“The biggest thing is the deafening noise,” Camporeale says. “You go from the SANFL where there’s smaller crowds, to playing in front of that. You scream for the ball and nobody can hear you.”
Clape, as predicted, would get the start at half forward, while Camporeale headed out to a wing. “I was pretty lucky, it was Sticks’s [Kernahan’s] 200th game so nobody gave a rat’s arse about me,” Camporeale says.
The Blues led by seven points at quarter-time and to that point Clape had been solid, but was yet to trouble the scorers in his new role up forward.
“For me it was a second chance,” Clape says. “So my aim was to just do the right things, really concentrate on what the coaches wanted me to do and hopefully get my hands on the ball.”
The Journey to Premiership Glory
To say that few people saw what was coming in rounds eight and nine of the 1995 season would be generous, because what happened baffles the most ardent of footy pundits even to this day.
With seven straight victories under their belts — including a three-game run where they knocked off potential contenders North Melbourne, West Coast, and Essendon — Carlton’s season was stopped dead its tracks by two Davids looking to shatter the resolve of the mighty Goliath decked out in his navy blue tunic.
But the Blues bounced back, and by the time the grand final arrived, they were a force to be reckoned with.
“You knew that if everyone just performed their role, that they were going to beat any team, on any day, no matter how well the opposition played,” Beaumont says.
And so it was on grand final day, when the Blues buried Geelong by 61 points in a domination from start to finish.
“It was pretty much done and dusted at half-time,” Camporeale says, with the Blues leading by 40 points having held a handy but slim lead of 13 at the first break.
Legacy of the 1995 Blues
Each player who donned the navy blue guernsey for the first time 30 years ago walked away from that season with life-changing memories. Memories of the celebrations, the expectations, the standards, and the victories.
For Clape, that second shot at football glory came at the perfect time, as injuries cruelled his next few seasons and forced him to retire aged 29, with just 35 more games under his belt after the 1995 grand final.
Ben Harrison’s journey at Carlton finished that very off-season. While working a shift at the Rose Hotel in Fitzroy, he was interrupted by the arrival of Parkin and Kinnear, who informed him of a trade to Richmond.
Glenn Manton, who had moved from an Essendon team and coaching method that didn’t click with his style, found a home at Carlton that helped him live out his football dreams.
“I don’t need that medal to remind me about how I played football and what I sacrificed. I know exactly what I did,” Manton says. “The medal is a wonderful trinket at best. It’s the relationships around the game that mean everything to me.”
At the start of that 1995 season, teenager Scott Camporeale stood in the MCG and was asked if playing in front of 85,000 screaming fans would be something he’d be interested in. By the end of the season, he was lifting the premiership cup on that very ground, having become a crucial part of the journey and a household name in the footy world.
