On a farm, about 20 minutes outside of Geelong now lives the most famous cow in the country.
While Cats fans everywhere were celebrating their side's first premiership in 11 years, Jeremy Cameron and a bevy of mates were partying well into the wee hours when things took a sudden, perhaps not an unsurprising, turn.
Thankfully, a steady stream of Stories on Cameron’s Instagram account caught the moment his medal was 'stolen', and a legend was born.
“We’ve done something very silly here”, he can be heard saying sometime around 4am, just as his 77,000 followers catch a glimpse of a very familiar-looking gold premiership medal around the neck of a mildly startled herbivore.
“Umm, can I have my medal back…?
But the Cow hard other plans, disappearing into the dark paddock, and a charitable Cameron, lesson learned, had to concede:
“Let him have it for the night. Go on, enjoy it! It’s for all of us.”
What’s less known is that the infamous cow, and a few others, were gained in exchange for a couple of Grand Final tickets, and those same cows nearly derailed the Dartmoor product’s Grand Final preparations on Friday night.
“It was a bit of a swap, yeah,” he told Triple M on Sunday.
“I had a mate who was pretty excited to come to the game so a bit of a swap for a few cows which was nice.”
The man with the cows was due to arrive at the Cameron farm at the civilized time of 7pm before getting bogged some 10 minutes from this destination. With cows in tow.
“He calls me at 9 o’clock: ‘I’ve missed the turn, I’m 10 minutes from your house, I’m bogged on the side of the road because I tried to do a U-turn with the trailer on," he said.
"I had to go pull him out which wasn’t a great prep. I got back about 10 o’clock, had to unload the cows of course because we weren’t going to leave them in the trailer and I’m thinking this is bad prep for a Grand Final."
30 odd hours later one of the new arrivals would go viral as celebrations continued well into the night as the doors to Cameron’s converted barn turned man cave were flung open for the first time.
Thankfully, a sleep deprived Cameron arrived at the Cats supporters day at Kardinia Park on Sunday with the medal safely around his neck after a successful early morning wrangling.
“I don’t know who came up with the idea,” he said on stage later that morning to the 20,000 strong crowd.
“We thought it was funny at the time then the cow actually got out of the pen and went into the open paddock and that’s when things got a bit funny.
“The one thing that I have learned overnight is not to give your medal to a cow at 5am.
“Easy to put on the cow, hard to get back."
The good news is, no cows were harmed in the process.
