âTo be a cult figure, a cult hero in the game is a massive, massive achievementâ â Zach Tuohyâs phenomenal AFL career
Zach Tuohy of the Geelong Cats celebrates kicking a goal against Sydney Swans in 2023 - the Laois man has played his last AFL game after confirming his retirement
Donnchadh Boyle
Today at 18:00
The sight of Zach Tuohy sitting in the stands at the weekend as the action unfolded in the Melbourne Cricket Ground jarred. For the curtain to come down on one of the great Irish sporting careers, with the Portlaoise man among nearly 100,000 spectators, felt wrong.
Since announcing his 15th season would be his last in the AFL, we wondered whether heâd be granted the Hollywood ending of a Grand Final win in his last game. Sport doesnât usually proffer such saccharine-sweet endings. And on Saturday morning, Geelong fell at the penultimate hurdle.
Tuohyâs omission from the squad was big enough to make the TV sports news in Australia. He is, by any measure, a star in the game, recognised as one of the best boots in the league, with remarkable durability. On this side of the globe, our AFL exports rarely get the credit their codebreaking feats deserve.
The problem with Zach Tuohy is for the past 15 years, heâs done his best work in the dark. When heâs been lighting up Aussie Rules ovals on one side of the world, weâve often only been drawing the curtains.
Familiarity and visibility mean itâs easy for us to appreciate the work and talent it takes to forge a career in the Premier League, but for most here, the AFL elicits only a shrug of the shoulders and a vague familiarity.
For that reason, Tuohyâs achievements have gone more unheralded here than they should. Heâs played 288 games â a record for an Irishman â and has won a Premiership. By Aussie standards, heâs had a remarkable career. But for someone who didnât play the game or hold a Sherrin oval ball until he was an adult, what he has achieved marks him as one of Irelandâs most underappreciated sports stars.
Tuohy went out to Australia as a shaggy-haired Laois minor whoâd scored a brilliant goal against Derry at Croke Park. He finishes up a record breaker, a man who followed the trail blazed by the likes of Jim Stynes and Tadhg Kennelly and kept on going.
CiarĂĄn Sheehan was there at the very beginning. The pair had been courted by Carlton for more than a year and were brought out for a month-long visit in 2009. Sheehan was 18 and Tuohy had just turned 19 when the clubâs CEO put them up in his pool house.
âWe went out in 2009, that summer, for about four weeks,â Sheehan recalls. âThe two of us and we stayed together and flew out together. I remember leaving Dublin airport and our parents being there. It was both of our first big trips away on our own.â
How Aussie clubs dealt with young Irish imports at the time wasnât an exact science. But Carltonâs idea was to acclimatise the pair for a month before bringing them back out for pre-season.
What followed was a sliding doors moment for the pair. Tuohy went back out to Australia and has since admitted he had to force himself to go, but with Cork football flying high, Sheehan stayed home. It was a wise decision as a year later he won an All-Ireland title. Sheehan kicked a point as Cork beat Down.
But before all of that, he had to tell Tuohy he was going on a different path.
âAt the time, I think it was an email, I might still have the email,â Sheehan remembers. âI remember letting him know and it wasnât an easy thing because we were going out there together and things are an awful lot easier when you are going out together.
âBut I knew Zach as a person. I knew what kind of a character he was, heâd fit in anywhere. Heâs very personable and there was an Irish presence there already with Setanta [Ă hAilpĂn], so he would have that bit of support.
âBut, yeah, it was a difficult one. I remember having a bit of a sick feeling in my stomach for that element of it. We had gone out there as a duo, had been in contact with them for over a year as a duo and then I felt like I was leaving him behind. But it goes to show how things turned out for him that he was better off without me, thatâs for sure!â
Just before Conor Nash answers the phone, he picks up a message from the Hawthorn club. Itâs the one that comes at this time every year and outlines the squad and who wonât be getting a deal for the new season. Friends and colleagues delisted in a âthanks-very-much-nextâ kind of way. In some cases, careers are over.
Itâs a reminder that behind all the winning and losing and running through barriers, they are working in a cutthroat business. Every year a wave of hotshot new rookies come into the system and every year someone is forced out. In the AFL, longevity is perhaps the most difficult thing to pull off.
Nash is 26 and recently signed a five-year deal to stay with Hawthorn. Deals of such duration are rare in the AFL, but it reflects Nashâs standing in a Hawthorn side that has surged back into the reckoning. Early next season, heâll become only the seventh Irish player to play in 100 games. He is well-placed to assess exactly what Tuohy has accomplished.
âI think it maybe comes back to the stats around it,â says the Meath native.
âHeâs only the second Irish player to reach 200 and is the record-holder himself. And from learning the game, they say there are transferable skills and thatâs all well and good, but to be so consistent for so longâŚ
âI mean, the stats came out for the average career. We just had a few guys who got delisted today and the message goes out âThanks, and such and such wonât be receiving contracts next yearâ.
âLike the average career is three and half years, I think that is a rolling average across everyone. So someone who is in his what, 15th season? Itâs just amazing.
âGetting your first game can take so long and even getting to 50 games is maybe the hardest, but for someone like Zach . . . itâs a young manâs game. Iâm 26, but Iâm starting to see where the new talent is coming from every year. And the turnover of lists from each year, it doesnât get any easier. Yes, you might be an established player, but there are young guys coming in, maybe top draft prospects, that are there to take your spot.â
As it happened, Sheehan and Tuohy would be reunited. Carlton never lost their interest in Sheehan and had approached him about coming out a number of times before he signed on in 2013.
He found an extraordinarily demanding sport. The physical expectations, requiring in the region of 12-15km to be covered in a game, were remarkable.
âIf you stepped into a changing room at the end of a game, itâs almost like the end of a battle,â Sheehan explains. âWith the strapping strewn out across the floor, fellas half in the foetal position or sprawled out across the ground.â
However, Sheehan insists it was the mental demands, the âalways onâ nature, that was most draining. In their game, set-ups and positioning constantly change depending on the scenario.
Carlton also had a âright to competeâ chart which listed a series of challenges players had to meet before they could be considered for selection.
âThereâd be your key strength indicators, your bench press, your major pulls, squats, your reps on chins and your push and pull factors.
âThen your body fat percentage and that would be individualised â youâd have to be below or on your body fat percentage to have your hand up for selection.
âAnd then you have your running goals, your 2k time trial times and they might test that a few times in the year and you need to be meeting your goals on that.
âLike KPIs (key performance indicators) in any corporate world, they have to be met or you are not getting played. So itâs extremely rigorous, itâs intense but an unbelievable experience.â
Around half of the Irish exports never get to play a senior game. Sitting on 288 games, Tuohyâs record may never be challenged. âDid I ever envisage heâd have the career heâs had now? Probably, yeah,â says Sheehan. âBut 288 is such an unbelievable achievement, any normal player would be happy with 150 games, or ten games. Iâm absolutely thrilled with my six!
âItâs an achievement in itself to go over and try to cut it at some level. But to be a cult figure, a cult hero in the game is a massive, massive achievement.â
Tuohy has ambitions to return and line out for Portlaoise before his playing time is all done. There will be inevitable speculation about whether might still offer Laois something too. But whatever he does, his legacy in the AFL is assured.
âYou just want to see the Irish boys do well, so from that point of view, Zach has been a real flagbearer for the lads,â Nash says. âAnyone mentions the Irish fellas itâs immediately Jim Stynes, Zach Tuohy and Tadhg Kennelly. To be held in that sort of regard is pretty outrageous.â
