Tuck's time Michael Gleeson
The Age
March 8, 2013 - 9:52PM Shane Tuck had played every game and should have been back on top of the world, but something was not quite right. For the second time in two years he thought his time was up.
In 2011 he thought his career was over. He had good reason: he was out of the side and seemingly out of calculations. He presumed he was going to be cut at the end of the season and went to the coach telling him he was to retire. He was talked out of it.
He then played every game of 2012 and, more importantly, played every one of those games back in his natural habitat in the middle of the ground, not hung out on a flank. Life was seemingly good again. But late in the season he felt his form slip and his body weary. He did not know if he had it in him to keep going any more. For the second time in two years he thought his AFL dream was over.
I just thought, 'this might be the end'. But we came good after that, Tuck said.
The reason for the malaise was two-fold. As a player who had known what life was like in exile he had developed a feeling of vulnerability that was hard to shake, but he also physically didn't feel right and had not felt right for some time.
Tuck and his wife visited a health spa last year on the north coast of NSW. It was there that he had the first inkling that something was amiss with his diet. A naturopath at the spa told him he suspected he had an enlarged small intestine and he should have a gastroscopy when he returned to Melbourne. In the midst of the footy season he didn't want to submit to the procedure so he waited until season's end.
The gastroscopy later confirmed what was suspected he had coeliac disease, a condition in which the body's immune system is unable to process gluten (found in wheat, rye, barley and oats). For a footballer used to consuming vast amounts of pasta it was a life-changing discovery.
I'd have times when I felt really tired and I didn't know why. Then I would feel good for a while then I'd bomb out. I was drinking a lot of coffee because I was so tired, he said.
I felt I had to do a lot right to feel OK, like if I went out and played up on the drink or whatever it really knocked me around. I just couldn't do that at all during the season where other blokes could, so I just had to look after myself really well, sleep well.
I just thought that is how I am, I looked around at some of the other blokes and they were handling training a lot better than me and they were the same age as me and I thought 'Is this how it is?'
The change when he made it cutting out wheat, substituting the footballer's lot of big pasta meals for brown rice or quinoa was not difficult and made an enormous change. It's difficult to quantify physical change but he feels significantly better. Maybe 10 per cent better, maybe more.
I don't know how long I have had it, I could have had it for 30 years, but it is one of those things where you can just have it one day. I do know I feel a lot better now than I have in a long time, he said.
It is another change in the storied career of Shane Tuck, the son of the games record-holder, Michael, nephew of one of the game's most brilliant yet flawed characters, Gary Ablett snr. He was the player who could, but almost didn't. Recruited to Hawthorn, he has made his career at Richmond, shifting from central casting to life on the fringe and back again. He has endured a period when his club preferred youth and when his family endured a far more human sadness when his brother Travis was found to have overdosed on drugs in his car.
That wasn't a great time, but you just tried to be there to back him up and help out any way you could, he reflected. It was probably harder on dad to be honest. Dad is just very into his footy, a straight-shooter. He wouldn't even know what that stuff was, so it was probably more hard on him.
Travis has got himself healthy and is living in Adelaide playing under his dad's old teammate Andy Collins at West Adelaide. He is going really well, Shane said.
An abiding fact of Tuck's career has been that despite coaches losing faith in him at times, the fans never did. His raw approach, reasonably described as blue collar, always endeared him to those at a club where a blue collar remains the only one to honour.
Just at the moment Tuck thought his club had gone past him, the game aligned with him again. While Tuck had planned to retire at the end of 2011 believing he was accurately reading the writing on the wall, coach Damien Hardwick had read the direction the game was going and wanted Tuck.
The new-to-old reinvention of the game made him, coincidentally like other sons of famous players Jobe Watson at Essendon and Sydney's Josh Kennedy more valuable.
Hardwick said: The game, at various stages, was moving away from him and players like him. The pace of the game and the way the game moved was taking the game away from him and his strengths, but it swung around again with sides that wanted to control the ball through possession and he is elite in winning the ball back from an opposition and winning it in the contest.
Which is not to say his weaknesses have been rendered irrelevant. His kicking has often been the subject of criticism though he and, more importantly Hardwick, thinks this is unfairly exaggerated and his speed remains one-paced.
Shane would be the first to say that, defensively, he was deplorable, Hardwick said.
It was just an area of the game that like many players who are ball winners, he just didn't even think about. It's what kept him out of the side for a while, but he has got a better grasp of that now from working with Ross Smith (the club's defensive coach as opposed to coach of defenders).
Tuck, 31, reflects on the change and is pleased with the fact he did not concede to the apparent leanings of others. Like those at the Punt Road end who would urge him into the side when he was out of it, Tuck retained his faith that the wheel would turn for him.
I just wanted to stick it out and try my very best, he said.
I was just trying to hang in there, I guess
I am glad I hung on, it turned out well.
Read more:
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/tucks-time-20130308-2fr72.html#ixzz2Mwv43ETH
