LIKE so many young AFL players delisted since September, former Gold Coast utility Clay Cameron has been sitting tight.
He knew the chances of being cut were growing as the season went on but he maintained the slim hope the cards might fall his way.
They didn't.
But he left his exit meeting feeling like he had so much more to give.
Now he hopes to show that to another club, but as each chance to be added to a list passes, the tension builds.
"I don't think you would be human if you weren't a bit nervous," Cameron told AFL.com.au.
After a minor clean up of the AC joint post-season and a short break to freshen up, he returned to training recently to be fit and ready if another club backs him in.
Chosen as a Queensland zone selection, the Brisbane-born Cameron was a junior athletics champion in discus and high jump who emerged as such a good young footballer he captained the Queensland under-18s.
A forward, he was pushed back into defence as the opposition goals piled up during a national championships, and he excelled.
Added to the Suns' list in 2013, his first few years were interrupted as he fought injury and a bout of glandular fever, but he made his debut in round one, 2014, playing a pivotal role in the Suns win over Richmond.
By the start of 2016, he finally looked to have cracked the consistency code at a club that was more settled than it had been before, playing the first seven games in a defence that began to look undersized and inexperienced when it lost Steven May and Rory Thompson.
The 191cm Cameron battled away on North Melbourne pair Ben Brown and Drew Petrie, before heading down to Geelong to take on Nathan Vardy as the Cats tore the Suns apart.
By round 10 however, he'd lost his spot and despite being emergency six times in the second half of the year did not add to his 23-game tally (he told AFL.com.au he was an emergency 18 times at the Suns).
That could be the end, but the athletic Cameron has got some attributes AFL clubs want, with insiders at the Suns saying he has the right mix of speed and endurance.
"[It] took me two or three seasons to grasp how athletic I was," Cameron said.
He can also play either end, having joined the forwards group this season at the Suns after playing senior football as a youngster at Mt.Gravatt in the forward line.
"Because I was pretty versatile I went down defence and then stayed there," Cameron said.
"I haven't had a lot of forward coaching, but a lot of clubs see me as a defender."
He is also rated highly as a professional individual who, despite being quiet, knows what is required to make it back.
"[I] work hard and [I'm] not going to pipe up too much but I enjoy driving standards and being very professional," Cameron said.
The first time AFL.com.au tried to speak to him he texted back to say he was out for a run.
He was chasing an invisible lure, another shot at the AFL.
It's four years since the Suns first contacted him while he was watching the film Taken 2 with his mates.
It has passed quickly.
Now he hopes that film title proves prescient and he is taken for a second time.
