Tara Murray
It was somewhat fitting that North Sunshine’s Cameron Howitt played his 300th career game against Albion on Saturday.
While the Western Football League division 2 clash was a one-sided affair with Albion getting the win, both clubs celebrated Howitt’s achievement.
And both clubs are close to his heart.
“I started at Albion when I was eight and played in the under-10s,” Howitt said before the milestone. “I played 160 games for Albion.
“I will now have played 140 with North Sunshine since joining in 2013. I only found recently from my uncle who is an Albion legend that my 300 falls when North Sunshine faces Albion.
“I couldn’t believe it.”
Howitt said there are seven or eight players from when he started playing at Albion who will be on the opposition side, including Josh Bench and Dylan Sloman.
It was a weird feeling for Howitt having never played against Albion with the two sides in different divisions until this year.
He still knows 90 per cent of people at the club and is regularly at the club.
For Howitt the move to the Roadrunners was meant to be only for a year.
Now he couldn’t see himself going anywhere else.
“My mate got me to come across in 2013 to play with him and a couple of boys,” he said.
“It was going to be a one year thing and then I was going back to Albion.
“It turned out I loved North Sunshine. There’s been a lot of bad times on the scoreboard but things are on the up.
Howitt said it’s hard to describe why he keeps staying at the Roadrunners but said they feel like there are positive times ahead.
“The club is given nothing,” he said. “A lot of people leave and then come back a few years later.
“We can’t pay what others can and it makes it hard to keep them.”
As well as being a player, Howitt has taken on a driving role in the club’s junior program. One person he has got done on a number of occasions to help out is his great mate, Collingwood premiership player Will Hoskin-Elliott.
Howitt got involved with getting the juniors going in 2018 and it’s got him even further involved at the Roadrunners.
“I want to be there the day we play finals,” he said. “I want to see us having under-8s through to under-18s and seniors.
“That is what keeps me going. We have under-8s, and under-10s at the moment hopefully we will have under-12s next year and build on that.”
