When Gold Coast debutant Caleb Lewis received a call from Suns list boss Kall Burns saying the club was keen to take him in the 2025 Mid-Season Draft, he thought it was a prank call from his mates.
"I thought I was pretty far off the mark at the time," Lewis told Zero Hanger.
"I was still pinching myself when Kall called me. I honestly thought someone was prank calling me, because I had a couple mates prank call me before trying to be funny and pretend to be an AFL club calling me because of my history around footy."
Lewis had taken the long route to the AFL, overlooked in his draft year despite playing strong football for the Sandringham Dragons and Vic Metro sides. Sydney and West Coast had interviewed him, but as he put it: "there was never anyone really too keen".
He signed with St Bedes in the VAFA, as well as the Footscray Bulldogs in the VFL in 2023, but after a year, made the switch to the Casey Demons and Southern Football Netball League powerhouse Dingley.
Aside from his football endeavours and AFL dream, Lewis entered a commerce degree at university, and was working full-time at his mate's dad's warehouse, packing and picking boxes, driving a forklift in the early hours of the morning.
"I was up at 5am, sometimes getting to work at 5am to make sure we ticked a bunch of runs to load the vans in the morning. I was doing full-time uni in a commerce degree, and, then in pre-season, it was three nights (of training) a week. I was going out to Casey Fields from Dingley, which can be anywhere between a 40-minute drive and one hour and 20 minutes, depending on traffic," he said.
"I was burning the candle at both ends, and something had to give at some point. It was looking like professional footy was going to be that, and try and focus on getting my uni degree done and working essentially.
"I felt it slipping away from me, and there was a few tough conversations at home. I was like, 'Maybe it's not going to be me. Maybe that's the dream I'm just not going to get too.' That was definitely a realisation I was succumbing to."
Lewis had done everything, kicking 66 goals in 19 games for Dingley in 2024, but struggled to crack into the Demons' VFL side.
"I remember having a good day out at Casey Fields, and was dropped because of AFL selection and personnel," he said. "They had a lot of key forwards that were playing twos at the time, and I was a key forward not on the list. I understood it, but it was frustrating."
Ahead of 2025, he returned to Casey after a strong pre-season, but remained linked to the Dingoes as his local club. He played one game for each side before suffering a concussion. But that didn't stop Burns, the Suns list manager, from getting in touch.
Lewis was named in the 2025 Young Guns clash against Vic Metro, which helped Gold Coast find a loophole in the drafting system.
"I played two games in the over-agers Colgate Young Gun games," he said.
"Kall got me into those games because I hadn't nominated for the national draft the year before. So that was the only way to make me eligible for the mid-season draft, if they were going to pick me.
"I remember the first game of those Colgate games, the day I was out of concussion protocols, so I got pretty lucky in that respect. The timelines added up perfectly. A day later and I probably wouldn't be on an AFL list. I did those two games, and I didn't end up playing any more footy until the draft."
Lewis had proved his skillset as a dominant presence at both ends of the field, but began his life as a Sun in attack.
After surviving a six-month contract and extending into 2026, coach Damien Hardwick trialled the Dingley gun in defence, and he began learning forward tips and tricks from the best VFL players, as well as the teachings from teammates Ben King, Jed Walter, Ethan Read and Jy Farrar at training.
"Round 1, they decided to try me in the backline," he explained. "At the start, I was pretty hesitant. I wasn't too welcoming of the idea because I thought I was a better forward than I was back.
"Since then, it's added strings to my bow. It has allowed me to see things as a backman, as I played on forwards, and applied some craft to me that I didn't like that made me vulnerable (as a forward) on the field. And now I know what a backman doesn't like. It's definitely held me in good stead."
Lewis returned to his preferred forward role in the past fortnight, and it has paid dividends, kicking four goals in each game against Sydney and Tasmania in the reserves.
Now, after years of juggling work, university and the uncertainty of whether his AFL dream would ever arrive, Lewis will finally run out onto an AFL field against the Western Bulldogs at People First Stadium on Sunday.
