AFL mid-season draft preview: High flyer Caleb Lewis attracting interest from Gold Coast

Caleb Lewis has quite literally soared onto the mid-season draft radar, with one club leading the race to add the high-flying forward to its list.

He’s the high-flying bolter from the ‘burbs.

Southern league key forward Caleb Lewis has climbed over packs and on to the radar of AFL recruiters as an outside chance for next month’s mid-season draft.

It’s believed Gold Coast has taken a particular interest in the 198cm Lewis.

The 21-year-old has played only four VFL games at Casey Demons in the past two seasons but at local level has produced excellent form for Dingley.

Last year he kicked 66 goals for the Dingoes and almost dragged them over the line in a tight grand final against Cheltenham.

He started this season where he left off the last, soaring over a 200cm opponent just 54 seconds into the first quarter of the Round 1 match against Chelt. Lewis finished with five goals.

Caleb Lewis soars. Picture: Andrew Keech

Lewis was an Under 16 Victorian representative alongside fellow Sandringham Dragons Josh Sinn, Blake Howes and Dante Visentini.

He burst into senior football with amateur club St Bede’s Mentone Tigers in 2023, booting 49 goals from 14 games. That year he also had four appearances with the Footscray VFL team, kicking three goals against North Melbourne and three against the Northern Bullants.

Former Tigers coach Steve D’Andrea said Lewis was an outstanding prospect.

“At 6’6 and with his jumping ability and ground ball … so much talent,’’ D’Andrea said.

Lewis was a VAFA Rising Star nomination in 2023, with the Tigers declaring “he catches the eye in everything that he does especially his ability to take contested pack marks on a regular basis’’.

Dingley coach Zach Horsley remembers his first meeting with Lewis at the end of 2023, saying the aerial presence wooing AFL clubs was an early topic of discussion.

“We met at a café in Dingley. I had watched a little bit of vision on him in some games he had scored big goals to see how he looked and how he moved,” he said.

“The first question I ask a lot of potential recruits is, ‘How do you describe yourself as a player?’ He just said ‘Oh, I don’t know, I love taking hangers, yeah, I love it’.

“I think since he’s come to Dingley he’s taken 15 genuine big ones; I think as a player he loves to play with some highlight reel stuff and really energise the people around him.

“He’s definitely lived up to his early assessment, without a doubt.

“He’s got a really good nous for football … if he feels like sitting on the shoulders is the best way to mark the footy, we’ll back him in.

“I think you’re a pretty brave person if you sit under the footy in front of him because you might end up on a poster.”

Lewis flies high for Dingley. Picture: Andrew Batsch

Caleb Lewis celebrates a goal for Footscray in the VFL.

Lewis kicked four goals in the low-scoring Southern league grand final to run close to winning the best-on-ground medal.

Cheltenham speedster Josh Lai won the medal and was soon swept up by Port Adelaide as a pre-season selection.

“In my opinion he was the best player on the ground, I think if we were on the other side of the ledger he was probably standing up there with two medals,” Horsley said.

“He gave everything he could, he kept us in the game, he clawed us back into the game and he did that all through the finals series with 11 goals in low scoring games.

“Finals are a measure of a player’s quality and his ability to step up was as good as there is.”

Lewis played in the first AFL Victoria Young Guns game and kicked three last-quarter goals.

“He works incredibly hard, he’s matured a lot and started to understand his game and his strengths a lot more,” Horsley said of his forward.

“He’s just trying to play good footy and if that takes him to AFL level then great, if that takes him to weekly VFL games, that’s great too.

“I don’t think he’s setting any expectations or limitations on what his career looks like, if he played the next 15 games at Dingley and got us into finals he’d be happy.

“If he was doing the same at Casey he would be rapt and if he got an opportunity at AFL level then I am certain he would take it with both hands.”

Originally published as AFL mid-season draft preview: High flyer Caleb Lewis attracting interest from Gold Coast