Virtually every state league player who thinks they belong on an AFL list has been in contact with the Bombers, who have yet to officially sign contracts with their "temps" but have earmarked about 15-16 players to play as top-ups in this unusually challenging NAB Challenge.

The players who are used as temps in the NAB Challenge obviously will be first port of call in the event that some or all of Essendon's 17 listed players who facing doping charges are suspended.

Given that these 15-16 players have been either overlooked in the draft - repeatedly in some cases - or have been discarded and then bypassed by all 18 AFL clubs, we should not expect the Dons to uncover the next Wayne Carey or Gary Ablett.

Still, the game's history is replete with stories - including pretty recent tales of the unexpected - about squat, slow guys or light-bodied kids who were passed over and belatedly turned into guns. Greg Williams and Sam Mitchell are among the numerous examples of champions whom the "system" failed to recognise until their early 20s.

While recruiting is more exact these days, there will always be rookie listers, discards and late-bloomers who eventually prove the competition and its list managers wrong. Werribee alone produced undiscovered nuggets in Michael Barlow and, more recently, North Melbourne's Ben Brown.

The cast for this surreal, yet very real episode "The Recruits: Essendon's top-ups" is expected to consist of delisted AFL players such as James Magner (ex-Melbourne), Mitch Brown (Geelong), Mitch Clisby (Melbourne), Jared Petrenko (Adelaide), Michael Hartley (Collingwood), plus some state league players who've never been drafted.

Close to half of the 15-16 will come from Essendon's VFL top-up players (those not on the club's senior or rookie list); VFL Bombers James Polkinghorne, the ex-Lion, and Jordan Schroder (ex-Geelong), thus, are short odds to play in the NAB Challenge.

For all the misfortune that has befallen Essendon and the game over the past two years, it would be some small compensation if, from the ranks of these temporary fill-ins - the most unwanted list - there emerged a couple of players who fashioned respectable AFL careers.

When this column was speaking to Kevin Sheedy last week, the coaching legend recalled how he had fought to have "a skinny little runt in the forward pocket" included in the Essendon team for an exhibition game in London.

Steven Milne was a top-up player at Essendon and mere VFL material at that stage. He duly grasped his moment in the sun - or London fog. "He kicked three or four goals and got drafted." Sheedy didn't seem to be bothered much that St Kilda, not Essendon, would be where Milne plied his goalsneak's trade for 14 years.

Recruiters from rival clubs are already interested in watching these pre-season episodes of "The Recruit", when the hopefuls will be tested against AFL players.

The temps won't know, of course, whether their trial will be confined to pre-season or if it will actually extend into the season proper. But, like the club that has offered them this first or second bite at the Big Apple, they must prepare themselves on the basis that they could be pressed into service.

Sheedy noted that James Hird himself was pick No.79 and that the ex-champion, like Richmond coach and ex-teammate Damien Hardwick and 1993 premiership player Paul Hills, would be a rookie in Thursday's draft, given that the national draft reaches only into the 60s, numerically speaking.

"They would be rookies now ... James Hird, Hardwick, Paul Hills all played in a premiership and all would be rookies."

The probability of unearthing a Hird or even a Mitchell might be remote. Still, from those 15 or 16 who are called up, there's a reasonable chance that one or two will show their wares, as Milne did in London, and find a buyer. Essendon might know more about these temps, but as with Milne, they will have no more right to draft a temp than the other 17 clubs.

The cast of this improvised episode of The Recruit can be assured of this: they will be watched closely.