CAM RAYNER is in the form of his career and a key part of Brisbane's premiership assault, so what has got him to be one of the game's most destructive players?

The star Lion chats with Cal Twomey in this week's Cal's Q&A about his 2024 run of form, the Lions' turnaround, Trent Cotchin's influence, getting fitter, quitting comparisons, his No.1 pick pride, Star Wars, Uno and an unlikely golf obsession.

You're in career-best form on the field and also the golf course. I never picked you as a golfer…
Neither did I… My handicap was around 18 or 19 for a long time and I wasn't breaking through because I couldn't get my drive up but I finally went and got a lesson and I've turned the corner. My handicap is about 13 and it's going down rapidly. I play in a tournament at the end of the year which will be fun. I didn't picture myself as a golfer either because I never played golf back in Sydenham growing up with dad. It's a social thing but I'm loving it.

You claimed the prized jacket recently amongst the Lions players and now get to participate in another event?
We have a jacket we play for and it's never actually happened before that the other event came up. It was luck that the PGA bloke was out there and he came out and said 'Whoever wins the jacket today is playing in the event later in the year'. I was locked in to win the jacket and then the boys at the last three or four holes said 'You know you are going to have to play in this tournament now' and I wanted to start shooting a couple into the trees. I'm looking forward to it though.

Are you as bull-at-a-gate on the course as on the field?
It's exactly the same on the golf course as well. I just try to hit it as hard as I can and try to get as much distance as possible. But I do give myself more credit on the golf course with the delicate side of things. I am actually pretty good around the green so have a bit more finesse in my golf game than my footy game maybe.

This second half of the season… do you think it's as good as have ever played at AFL level?
Yeah, I think so. The one thing that's held me back in recent years is my consistency. We've had Trent Cotchin (in a leadership role) up here and he's been one of the most consistent players. I've done a lot of work with him and consistency is a hard thing to work on because you can't put a lot of things into place to be it, you just have to go out and perform each week. I've tried to work on the mental side of the game, little cues that get me going. To have played consistent footy for nearly over two months has been rewarding. I couldn't do it without the team, though. With the role that I've been playing, a lot of my teammates help me and allow me to do my things, which comes from building relationships over the years. For the team to have trust in me is a great feeling.

What has 'Cotch' taught you? He saw Dustin Martin up close play a similar role at times…
He's done a lot of work with our leadership group and that was his main aim at the start of the year. He's someone who has come from outside of the football club, has played against us, he knows what it takes to get to the top and work in a team environment. He hasn't changed a lot but it's more the little tweaks I can implement and that's what you can do over your career to get better. It's also about not stewing on things in games.  

You've kicked 20 goals since round 10 and are having a huge say on games up the field too. What's the licence like to move up around the ball?
Everyone has different strengths out on the footy field and if we can play a game style that allows everyone to play to their strengths we become a better team. My strength is going around the ball and trying to impose myself on the contest but I wouldn't be able to do that without my teammates allowing me to do that as well. We always talk about our forward line being so dynamic that anyone can get a lick any week and the rest of us just have to go to work while it's not your turn and the time will turn when it is your go. The midfield and forward group allow me to get up to the ball and try to have an impact when I need to, which has been awesome.

It's such a unique role. How have you found the focus on a position that few play and even fewer can play well?
Maybe earlier in my career I didn't really have that balance very well. I was thinking, 'If I'm going into the midfield now, I need to play as a midfielder like every other midfielder in the comp and run around and have 30 touches like them' and then when I was in the forward line I thought, 'I need to have this amount of contested marks and this amount of groundballs'. There's things other players in the AFL can do that doesn't suit my game and vice versa so over the years I've found that balance of what works for me. Things that work for me might not work for someone else but when I started to figure out 'I can do this a lot better than what other people can', that's when I have my biggest impact. In the last two years I've really found what my best footy looks like and not what the best footy for someone else might look like. That's what's changed this year. It's my brand of football I'm playing, not me trying to be like anybody else. It's me doing things I've done my whole junior career and before. And on top of that, doing it consistently so you can build trust.

Comparison can be the enemy of progress…
Exactly. There's some players who are genuine ball magnets who can go into the midfield and get 30 touches and make it look really, really easy. But if I can go in and get 15 or 20 and have maximum impact, that can be a real strength for us.

As a team the turnaround in form over the past three months has been massive as well. Does the Giants loss last week feel like one that got away given the missed chances?
We've been playing really consistent footy and it's probably been a good build for us because this is the type of footy that stacks up in the back end of the year and we've had it going for a while now. It's nearly do-or-die and we've seen how much the ladder can change. We've been playing on edge for the best part of two or three months so it's been good prep. On the weekend GWS are a quality opposition but we feel we probably shot ourselves in the foot at times, we had so many opportunities to put them away early and even later in the game we had lots of shots on goal, we just weren't making the most of them. I don't think anyone will lose any confidence out of the weekend.

On Saturday it's Collingwood at the MCG for the first time since last year's Grand Final. That game was five years' worth of finals performances for the team. How do you reflect on it?
When you play in a Grand Final it all happens really quickly and before you can look at it all and enjoy it, it's done. Obviously personally I wasn't really happy with my performance. You work your backside off to get there and to not be able to do what you really wanted to do was a little bit frustrating. If you don't play that well and you win, you probably don't think about it as much but when you lose it definitely stings a bit.

Have you watched it back?
It was tough. We watched it as a group at the footy club and went through things we needed to work on. That's the best way to go about it – you need to stare your problems straight down the barrel and address them. Then personally about two or three months after, I watched it again. You go back and look at all these little moments and think 'Ahh if I just did this or that' but you can fall into a rabbit hole if you're doing that. It was good for our club that we got there and that's what we wanted to do but we really want to go to that next level again. It speaks volumes for the group this year that after we were challenged early in the year and were 2-5, for us to stick to our process and to then break through gives me a lot more confidence this year that nearly every type of game and outcome there is, we've been a part of it over the last three or four years. Going into the next few weeks it doesn't matter what the games throw at us, we think we can problem-solve our way through it. That gives you a lot of confidence.

This is your seventh year, but go back to before you were at the Lions. You put together a dominant season to rocket into the No.1 mix. Was it a whirlwind?
You probably don't really notice it until you're in the system, but as a 17-year-old kid it was all happening. My mum was saying the other day that we were going to school and I was on the back page of the paper heading into my English class in the morning. It happened so quickly. The draft happens then I was off to Brisbane so fast, and you don't really get to think about how much work you've put in and how awesome the experience is that you just went through. My family is so loving and caring and they supported me all the way. They're still my biggest supporters today so going through it with them when I was 17 and taking them along for the ride too is the main thing I'm proud of. To continue to do it now, getting them to meet all the boys, enjoy games and putting together some form and seeing how proud dad is walking around the footy club, it means the world to me. But I could go out and have two disposals and Dad would still be pumped as anything and proud.

You had to do almost a solo 2km time trial just a week before the draft after missing the Combine with injury. How do you recall that day?
It was a pretty crazy couple of days because I'd just gotten my licence that morning then I drove to Docklands to run it. I was having my 18th birthday party that night. I wouldn't have forgotten the run either way, but Damien Austin, our high performance guy, was there and he brings it up very frequently. It's a genuine topic of conversation at the footy club. He speaks about it sometimes and the boys kind of think he's taking the mickey out of me and says 'Cam started off and by the first lap he was already looking in the grandstands for who was there'. I think it was me, Charlie Constable and Darcy Fogarty. There were no records getting broken that day, I know that for sure. David Noble was the GM of the Lions and he came over a few days after and gave me a fair clip for the run as well. I maybe thought it was funny at the time but I don't think everybody else was laughing.

How did you find the focus on your running? It's a narrative that has been there through your career.
Because I was trying to base myself off other people, that was one of the things that was holding me back a little bit. It was definitely something I needed to work on but early in my career I thought for me to be the next best player I needed to get to this ultimate level of fitness where I was running with everyone else. In pre-season I'd see blokes like Hugh McCluggage and Jarrod Berry running out in front and I was like 'If I want to get to that next level, I need to be next to them'. What I figured out, though, was I just needed to bridge the gap to get to a point where it allowed me to go out there to do things that would separate me from them. They might've been better runners but I might've been able to do this or that better. In my first couple of years it was definitely something that was holding me back from playing the type of footy I wanted to. I was working extras in the off-season to improve that. Most of the boys in Brisbane are not from here so we'd do our run clubs together in the off-season. Early on I didn't really do that, until three or four years in. Once I started doing that and tried tagging along with someone who I knew was better than me, it brought me along.

I always ask the No.1 picks this: would you like to be No.1 if you could choose now?
100 per cent yes. That was all part of the experience. At the time it wasn't a make-or-break thing for me, I was just happy to get drafted and it didn't really worry me. But looking back, it was such an awesome experience. Draft night with my family is something they'll remember forever. The added pressure of being No.1 can get a bit annoying whenever someone brings your name up but there's always pressure on everyone, so a little bit added on didn't really faze me too much. It can have an impact when you're trying to compare yourself to other players in your draft, like 'Jeez, he's playing this well and Brisbane put the trust in me to be a better player than him and I'm not doing that right now'. But looking back I definitely wouldn't change it. It's something I'm still very proud of to this day.

You got going in your first three years and barely missed a game and then did your knee ahead of your fourth season in 2021. How long did that take you to get back to your way?
You feel like you're back to your best when you're training but definitely that next year when I got back I was still a little bit off. I try to get a lot of power through my legs when I play so in the back of your head at the time it's hard not to think if you go at 100 per cent will it happen again? It probably took me 10 or 11 rounds into that year before I fully trusted it again. I missed a full 12 months of footy and I felt like I was distant from the footy club and was a little bit on the outside. It was hard for me as well because COVID was going on and the boys were stuck in Melbourne and I was in Brisbane. I was going in just to do gym every morning and that was it. You don't realise how much you miss it and how much it means to you until you have it taken away. My professionalism has gone through the roof since then.

Everybody knows your happy approach to life but how was that challenged during that time?
It was tough. One of my good mates, Eric (Hipwood), did his knee that same year so we spent a lot of time together and bounced ideas off each other. When footy is something you can bank on getting enjoyment and happiness out of every weekend and it's taken away, it leaves a big hole. I just tapped straight back into my family and leaning on them in that period made me the happiest. They couldn't care if I was playing footy or picking up garbage, they love me for who I am. That's who I went to when it wasn't working.

Next year you'll be one of the game's biggest free agents with your contract expiring at the end of 2025. How are you approaching that decision?
I'm not thinking about it much to be honest. The main thing I can do is keep playing consistent footy and that's what I'm really going to work on. Whatever happens will happen. I love the Lions and this has been the club that's looked after me since I was a teenager. I'm in no rush to do anything, but this club means so much to me and I've enjoyed every single moment I've been up here. We'll see what happens but I'm focusing on my footy and making sure I can get those consistent games in.

Off the field you're a Marvel devotee, even having a Thor tattoo. How is the Star Wars obsession going as well?
It's good, I've got the two dogs, Ani and Obi, who are both named after Star Wars characters. If you didn't grow out of Star Wars when you were 20 then you're probably not going to grow out of it, and that's me. My games room is covered in Star Wars, there's Star Wars posters around the house, which are maybe a little bit too much. My games room is ridiculous, I've got a whole back wall, a Darth Vader headset. Honestly, there's so much in the house. A lot of it is stuff I've brought up from Melbourne as well. Mum's a bit of a hoarder and doesn't want to throw anything out so she brought a lot of that stuff up and it stays at my place now. 

Back in 2017 we did an interview at your house with your parents and there was a competitive Connect Four challenge going on. Are the board games still in the repertoire?
They are. To be fair, I haven't played Connect Four in a while. I've fallen back into trusty Uno over the last six months. There's actually a little scoreboard up on my fridge at the moment of my mum and my partner who have been playing Uno with us. I'm down at the moment but it's still something that's frequently played at my place.

So card games, Star Wars and golf. Then you come out and channel all the aggression on game day…
You know me, I'm very chilled and like enjoying my company around the people I love. Anything I can do that can bring a bit of happiness or competitiveness at home, I'm straight into that. It's probably a different side to what people see on the footy field but it's always about enjoying life and laughing when you can. I'm just really enjoying playing footy again which is the best thing and when I'm smiling and having fun that's when I can enjoy it and play the best footy I can. Since the injury I've found some consistent form and I'm loving it at the moment.