Cameron Ling was surrounded by family and friends at their home in Geelong when the 1999 draft day arrived.

The St Joseph’s pupil was quietly confident that his name would be read out and despite a visit from Geelong’s recruiting and list manager Stephen Wells to the Ling household in the lead up to the draft, the triple premiership winning Cat was quite nervous.

“I wasn’t 100% sure I was going to get drafted. I felt pretty good. I thought it was Geelong or potentially a couple of interstate clubs that had shown a bit of interest and Collingwood up the highway, but even with the chats I had, there was nothing really definitive,” Ling said.

“Stephen Wells had been around to the house and met the parents but still definitely not a ‘we are going to take you’ so I went in nervous, excited and everything, and just had this awful knot in my stomach all day.”

Ling never expected to be selected in the first round, but once the draft entered the second round the nerves began to build.

“It was about pick 25 onwards where the nerves just built one by one by one and I was like ‘oh no what’s going to happen, is it going to happen’, but I had the family and friends around me.”

Eventually pick 38 arrived and Geelong called for extra time... as Wells and his recruiting team decided whether to select Ling or Corey Enright.

"He has told me they were tossing up me and Boris and which order to take us in."

"I think it may have been a Collingwood who were at pick 40 or 41 and maybe that they were going to get me but not Boris, so that’s what they were discussing…

"(So they) asked for more time to just string it out a bit more and then the moment he read out the player number (which I had no idea what it was)... Cameron Ling... Geelong Falcons... and then I just got swamped by mates, Mum planted a big kiss on my cheek, and my brother and sister, it was an incredible moment."

Ling’s memory of who called him first is ‘very blurry’.                       

“I think Bomber rang, then (Garry) ‘Buddha’ Hocking and then I think Ronny Watt and Brendan McCartney turned up at the front door to the chaos that was going on at home, and then the phone started ringing off the hook, it was the old home phone, so mum was answering it and passing it over and it went nuts from there.”