TUCK OF ALL TRADES
Russell Gould
MX
Monday July 18, 2005.
Shane Tuck has thrown away the drum sticks, tossed aside his shovel, binned the Melway and finally been given the chance to play footy, as RUSSELL GOULD discovers
Shane Tuck's life is a long line of stalled starts. And until this year, that included the Richmond revelation's football career.
At 23, Shane, the son of AFL games record-holder Michael Tuck is a late bloomer. Up to now he has had to earn his bread in other ways. It started with plumbing. "I did it with my old man when I was a bit younger," Tuck revealed. Then there was brick-laying. "I've done two years of the apprenticeship. " When the sun set, he turned to the drums.
"I was in a band, Half-Spent we were called," Tuck said. "We did a few gigs, never really got paid much, $30 bucks or something each. "We played a few pubs, the Berwick Pub once. I was no John Bonham (Led Zeppelin, for the musically challenged), but I could keep a beat."
Music had to give way to football when Tuck joined the Hawthorn rookie list. But he could not shake the shadow of his father that lingered over Glenferrie Oval, and was forced to move on.
"I had a year off and played 12 games at Carrum Downs. They were pretty ordinary, and have folded now. But I had a few mates there," Tuck said. "I lost interest in footy after Hawthorn, the time I spent there I just didn't enjoy."
He turned his hand to yet another pursuit. "I was a courier, in a ute. My next door neighbour owns a courier business so I was doing that, five days a week, eight hours a day. It was car parts," he said. 'They wanted something taken somewhere and I took it. I was happy doing that at that time, but at the end of the year I wanted to play again."
But no one in Melbourne was taking on 21-year-old discarded rookies, so he joined West Adelaide under the coaching of former Adelaide and Hawks ruckman Shaun Rehn. "I went there because I wanted to try something different. My mates were just hanging around, not doing much," he said.
He kept homesickness at bay by picking up the tools. "I was landscape gardening," he said. "A couple of the blokes at the club worked at a landscaping business, and I told them I wouldn't mind doing something because just sitting around in a new place, you get kind of homesick."
A content Tuck, no longer burdened by expectations, then started to play the football his name suggested he could, and thoughts of an AFL career were re-ignited. Two years later, he was snaffled by Richmond at 73rd pick in the 2003 draft. "Now that I've got a chance to play AFL I am going to grab it with both hands," he said.
"If you had the opportunity of labouring for 40 hours a week for $500 bucks, or train three times a week, do some weights, play footy and earn your $3000 a week or whatever, you'd go with that."
