Cameron Wood sounds like a lot of fun. For starters his Twitter handle is probably_wood and secondly he spent his year out of the AFL system working as a Nova Casanova “promo guy”.

The knocks on Wood came thick and fast from frustrated Collingwood supporters during his five years at the club, but the applause on his rookie selection yesterday from past teammates is more indicative of his popularity.

“My head is going a million miles an hour at the moment…I hadn’t given up hope, but I wasn’t holding my breath.”

When a player earns an unexpected drafting it is always fascinating to hear what they were doing when the news came through. Wood was decked out in Nova red at Highpoint Shopping Centre giving away promotional products. He had to leave his post and check Twitter to hear the news.

“It came out of the Blue, pardon the pun,” he told the Herald Sun…Zing.

His re-drafting wasn’t a total shock, Wood enjoyed a solid season playing for Williamstown in the VFL and he knew of interest from Carlton when recruiting manager Shane Rogers phoned him on Friday before the rookie draft. Initially Wood was reluctant to return Rogers’ voicemail, thinking it was a prank – Google confirmed it wasn’t.

This morning Wood was a guest on Nova’s morning show, Hughesy and Kate, they joked that just last week he was a participant in their garage sale, then a week later he is a Carlton footballer.

Wood believes this was his most enjoyable year of football because of the balance he was able to achieve.

“I got drafted at 17 so this is the first year as an adult to have a semi-normal life,” he said.

“Having perspective and learning a bit about myself will hold me in good stead going forward.”

Following the national draft Wood sent out a Tweet that might have signalled the end of his AFL dream…but it was premature.

Less than a week later Wood is speaking at a press conference in his honour, but this afternoon the Nova red was back on and he was on his way to the Anthenaeum Theatre to help set up for Hughesy and Kate’s final radio show tomorrow morning.

He isn’t ready to change his colours just yet.

We also hear Wood has been given Mark McClures old number 36, Carlton’s next cult figure might just have arrived.