THIS year's NAB AFL Draft changed the lives of dozens of young men, but few would have been as pleasantly surprised as Rohan Kerr to hear a club call their name.

The Dandenong Stingrays' half-forward had played sparingly during the TAC Cup season thanks to a serious ankle injury, but his exquisite kicking skills and a good performance in the grand final loss to Calder at least gave him an outside chance of selection.

Kerr tuned into the broadcast of the draft on his car radio with some mates while on a trip to Torquay and fondly recalls the moments immediately following Carlton's fourth-round selection.

"It took about five minutes for me to believe that it had actually happened," Kerr says.

"I had some mates in the back of the car and they were just jumping all over me and yelling and screaming.

"I did my ankle in May and I was out for eight or nine weeks so I only played about 11 games this year. It was a big shock for me to be asked to the state screening let alone get drafted. It was completely unexpected, but I'm not complaining."

Kerr's mobile phone quickly went into overdrive with one of the many phone calls he received coming from Blues' recruiting manager Wayne Hughes who later admitted the pick had been a touch speculative.

Assistant recruiting manager Shane Rogers echoed that sentiment, but said the reward for taking the calculated risk could be large.

"Rohan is more outside the system I guess you'd say. He only played at the Stingrays for a year and he missed a fair bit of that with the ankle injury, but we loved his skills," Rogers says.

"He's one of those kids who can weight the footy well in traffic. When he kicks the ball he sits them out in front so his teammates can run onto it. Towards the end of the year he really started to come into his own as a midfielder, so long term we think he can be a half-forward flanker who can push up into the middle.

"He has really silky skills around goals, he was a very good TAC Cup-level player and if we can get the conditioning part of his game right we think he's got enormous upside in him."

The club's only Victorian selection at the draft - he hails from the Melbourne suburb of Aspendale - knows he has a long road ahead of him, but he's determined to give himself the best opportunity to play AFL football.

"I have to get my skinfolds down and bulk up a bit at the same time," he says.

"I'm going to really focus on that and hopefully that will allow me to get into a position where I can get a game.

"They've given me a really clear set of guidelines and they'll help me if I ask for it, but it is up to me to do it myself. I have to take that level of professionalism upon myself, but having said that they do encourage you to come forward with any questions I've got which is great."

Kerr's selection delighted his Carlton-supporting father and forced him into a quick rethink of his own childhood allegiance to the Magpies.

"I walk into the rooms every day and I see all those famous names up on the walls and you wonder how you can possibly compare to them," he says.

"It's almost a bit embarrassing walking in here and seeing names of club greats like Craig Bradley and Stephen Kernahan on the wall - it's going to require a big step-up from me that's for sure."