15 YEARS AGO, two teenagers, one from Laois and one from Cork, headed to Melbourne to embark on a sporting adventure.
Zach Tuohy and Ciaran Sheehan were both a few months out from their 19th birthdays as they parked burgeoning Gaelic football careers, having risen rapidly through the inter-county underage ranks.
They were heading to Carlton for an Australian Rules trial, after being spotted by a scout, Gerard Sholly, and invited to spend some time with the club.
With their only prior interaction being as opponents in minor challenge games, the pair met at Dublin airport and flew off together to the other side of the world.
“We got on like a house on fire straight away,” Sheehan told The42 in September 2020.
“The (club) CEO, he had a summer house down the coast, and (we) stayed there. Sure we were only 18 at the time, we didn’t know what we were at. Two young bulls, didn’t know whether to go left or right out there.
“I remember we got a slab of beer one night at the start and said we’d go out in the local town after and it turned out to be the quietest place ever.
“It was great to have that overall experience with someone else.”
Sheehan returned home and funnelled his energy into Cork football, lifting Sam Maguire in 2010. He got a chance in November 2013 to have another crack off breaking into the AFL.
By the he joined Carlton, Tuohy was an established force, well on the road to becoming the record Irish appearance-holder in the AFL, a Premiership winner in 2022, and a figure that has drawn plenty praise after today’s announcement that he is to retire from the AFL at the conclusion of the 2024 campaign.
A Geelong person for life 🫶 #WeAreGeelong pic.twitter.com/JyB6ROo3QB
— Geelong Cats (@GeelongCats) August 21, 2024
The Portlaoise native’s achievements have been remarkable. It is a sport littered with stories of Irish players struggling to adapt to the demands of the game. Luckless runs of injuries have been a common occurrence, homesickness has afflicted some, the rigours of professional sport have not been to the liking of others.
But Tuohy’s stunning endurance has seen him both survive and thrive.
He made his AFL debut in 2011 for Carlton, going on to feature 120 times for the club. In late 2016, he moved to Geelong and a club debut arrived in the opening round of the 2017 season.
In September 2020 in Queensland, he became only the second Irish-born player to reach the 200 appearance mark.
In round 17 of the AFL season in 2023, he surpassed the legendary Jim Stynes as he set a new record for games played by an Irish footballer with his 265th outing.
At Geelong’s home in the GMHBA Stadium this Saturday, he is set to line out for the 287th time in the AFL.
Geelong have already secured a place in this year’s finals with Tuohy aiming to sign off in style and add to his Premiership breakthrough in 2022, when he and Mark O’Connor joined Tadhg Kennelly in the small but illustrious group of Irish players that have landed AFL’s biggest prize.
It is one of the great Irish sporting success stories and also one that feels under-appreciated.
“I was looking at stats when I was working for the AFL Players’ Association,” recalled Sheehan, four years ago.
“There was only eight (Irish) players of the about 50 that had come over had managed to get to 50 games or more. That’ll show you the scale of how difficult it is.
“But even a lot of Australians, they’d massively celebrate a 200th game. It’s a huge thing.”
In Ireland, Tuohy’s achievements have tended to fly under the radar. The reasons are multifactorial, playing a sport in another hemisphere naturally leads to someone operating out of sight and out of mind. An increase in live games on TV has afforded players greater exposure to Irish audiences, but it remains difficult to grab the local attention when shining in a sport that is indigenous to Australia.
Perhaps the complexity of the relationship between Gaelic Games and Australian Rules is a contributory factor in the lack of public recognition. The last International Rules series took place in 2017 with no games having unfolded since and not much public appetite existing for it to be revived.
Whenever news breaks of another rising Gaelic football star being snapped up by an AFL club, the reaction can be mixed in the impacted county. No one begrudges a youngster for sampling a professional sporting lifestyle, but there is a sense of regret at the loss of a playing talent, and wistful debates often take place about what transformative impact the player would have had on the fortunes of his county or club.
Tuohy’s ties to his native Portlaoise have never been diluted. In his earlier AFL years when he journeyed home during the off-seasons, he would return at the height of club championship campaigns, pitching in when he could.
In one Laois senior football tie in 2015, he came off the bench to rescue a draw for Portlaoise against Emo, and then fired 1-2 in the replay win.
“It kills him not to be able to line out with Portlaoise every time but he’s just had to put his career ahead of anything else and put his family first,” outlined Kieran Lillis, the Laois footballer and close friend of Tuohy, when speaking to The42 in 2020.
“That’s admirable too. At the start there might have been an expectation that he would line out with us whenever he was home. But I think the lads have understood that this is his profession.”
Tuohy’s impact on other Irish players is striking. Sheehan and Louth’s Ciaran Byrne have spoken of the guidance he gave them during their spells with Carlton.
That mentoring role continued in Geelong for Kerry duo Mark O’Connor and Stefan Okunbor, and more recently Mayo’s Oisin Mullin.
Irish Pride 🇮🇪☘️ O'Connor and Tuohy joined former Swan Tadhg Kennelly as Irish AFL premiership players! #Untameable pic.twitter.com/Zec0HKsRYo
— Geelong Cats (@GeelongCats) October 22, 2022
Tuohy’s consistency and persistence placed him as a perfect figure for young Gaelic footballers to aspire to, as they stepped into an unfamiliar and sometimes daunting Australian sporting environment.
Between 2012 and the start of the 2019 season, Tuohy stitched together a stunning sequence of 138 consecutive games. There is an element of luck to staying injury free in a sport of such bone-crunching intensity, but that level of endurance requires a lot more than mere fortune.
“It’s insane stuff,” recalled Sheehan.
“I walk away happy I got to play six (AFL games) and I can’t even comprehend his (tally). I do think he’s the ultimate professional.
“It does take a lot of discipline to be able to recover right, eat the right things, stretching and all that.
“There was only one thing on his mind. That was to play AFL football and play it for a long period of time. He’s done just that.”
In his autobiography ‘My Journey’, the late, great Jim Stynes talked about his own trailblazing achievement in reaching the 264-game mark, while playing for Melbourne Demons.
“I didn’t chase that record – it just happened.
“Yet it became an achievement I was pleased to have associated with my name because it is equated with resilience, one of the great qualities a man can possess.”
Those words could transfer easily to Tuohy’s sporting narrative. Resilience established him in the AFL over several years, brought him to a first Grand Final appearance in 2020 when Geelong lost to Richmond Tigers, and the capacity to rebound from that to triumph at the same stage in 2022 when Geelong defeated Sydney Swans.
His autobiography will be released in October this year, ‘The Irish Experiment’, written with journalist Catherine Murphy.
As one last bid for AFL finals glory awaits, Tuohy is one sporting experiment that produced quite brilliant results.
