Kurri Kurri legend Mick Campton's two biggest motivators in reaching his 300th game will run out with him onto Kurri Kurri Sportsground on Saturday to mark the milestone.
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Campton said sons Darcy 7 and Oliver 5 were the major reason he continued in the game and joined his mate Justin “Bumper Peterkin” in the 300 game club.
“I’ve got my young fellows now running around playing in the Kurri colours too. It makes me pretty proud that they get to watch me play,” Campton, whose 300 games were spread across two stints at Kurri Kurr and Cessnock from 2003-2008
“That’s one of the big motivations I put myself through it all as a 35-year-old.
“I’m just a game at the time at the minute. There are no more long-term plans”
Campton said playing one first grade game for the Bulldogs would have been a great enough honor, but to play 300 games with the Bulldogs and Goannas was beyond anything he imagined.
“Making my first grade debut with blokes like Steve Crowe, Brett Clements was a highlight. They were blokes I was watching play football on TV and I got to play with them.
“That was my debut year, later in my career I was able to play at Cessnock with blokes like Adrian McNab and Troy Petrysen, Steve Storrie and Lance Lennard.
“I used to watch them on the hill when I was a kid at Kurri.”
Campton said his mid-career switch to the Goannas was instrumental in him staying in the game.
“I had a conversation with Dan Smailes at a barbecue. He said ‘how about you come up to Cessnock, I’m coaching next year’,” Campton said.
“I thought he was joking until he rang me up a week a later. I moved up there it probably benefitted me I think.
“I honestly don’t think I’d still be playing if I didn’t got there. I learnt a fair few things about football when I was up there.”
Campton played in the 2009, 2013 and 2016 Bulldogs finals campaigns and ranks 2013 as one of his favourite football memories despite losing the grand final to Wests.
“It was pretty good, it was a bit of a blur it all happened so quickly,” he said.
“We qualified and the next thing we were playing Souths and yep she’s all over we’re in the grand final.
“It was like a mad rush.”
In his second stint with Kurri Kurri, Campton rates Jesse Royal, Regan Tanner, George Ndaira, Nathan Ross and Peterkin as the most talented players at the club.
“Then out of the current crop there are blokes like Mitch Cullen and Ben Wyborn who are two Kurri juniors I’ve watched play since they were kids,” he said.
“I played all my juniors and a lot of footy with Bumper. It’s like a family, it always has been and always will be.”
