Tuck wheel keeps turning
Stephen Rielly
The Age
May 7, 2005
Shane Tuck’s AFL career faltered under the shadow of his legendary father. But at a new club, in the spotlight of the centre square,Tuck has found the space to shine, writes Stephen Rielly.For a long time, people knew who Shane Tuck was, but as a footballer, not what he is: a midfielder equipped with an armourpiercing hit and a gift for spiriting — some would say wrenching — a ball free from the modern maelstrom of bodies and wills otherwise known as the midfield stoppage.
That discovery was made two years ago by Shaun Rehn and, like a prospector remembering the day a nugget appeared in his pan, he enjoys the memory of his find.
The former Adelaide and Hawthorn ruckman, who was then embarking on his career as coach of West Adelaide, thought of Tuck as a likely flanker, either back or forward, much as everyone else had to that point.
The two had crossed paths at Hawthorn in 2001, the first of Rehn’s two seasons at Glenferrie and the last of Tuck’s two years on the club’s rookie list.
He had liked Tuck’s intensity and was not discouraged by the young man’s decision to effectively drop out of the football system in 2002 after being delisted by the Hawks. Rehn was new to coaching but wise to the football practice of passing unforgiving and often hurried judgements on young players.
Tuck had been wayward and physically frail in his time at Hawthorn but Rehn did not believe that this would necessarily always be the case.
“When he first got over here (West Adelaide), I didn’t know where to fit him in. There were probably half-a-dozen positions we thought his physique could allow him to play,” Rehn says.
“He’s 6’3 (188cm), he’s quick and good overhead, and my initial thought was a flank. But a niggle interrupted his training and when we decided to bring him back through the reserves he asked for a run in the guts.
“In that one game in the middle, it stood out that he was taller than his opponents and his ability to win the contested ball was as good as we’d ever seen. My assistants came in after watching the game and said, ‘We’ve got a league player out here.’
“From that point on, we played him as a ruck-rover and at his height and speed, his opponents found it hard to pin his arms and tackle him and he was also excellent as a third man up in a stoppage. From there, it was whether he would get an AFL opportunity. He did easily well enough to get drafted, it was whether someone would pick him.
“I pushed up for him with everybody, but I think most people thought of him as being something other than an onballer, which is what we’d discovered he was.”
It was the start of a brilliant year for Tuck, Rehn and West Adelaide. By its end, Tuck, at 22, had been re-drafted into the AFL by Richmond and Rehn had narrowly failed to become a premiership coach in his first season.
Tuck’s father, Michael, believes the experience meant more to his son than simply being re-drafted.
“Shaun got him over there and turned his life right around,” the AFL’s games recordholder said this week. “He gave him another chance to play, but Shane also came back a stronger person.”
Tuck had not been physically able to grasp the opportunity offered to him by Hawthorn. He hurt an ankle in an after-hours folly, required treatment for a heart irregularity and for a long time battled the groin complaint osteitis pubis.
As Donald McDonald, then coach of Hawthorn’s VFL affiliate Box Hill, says: “It was his physical state. We were all rapt in his potential but he just couldn’t get to the line. The question had to be asked: Would his body allow him to play?”
Unable to take the field regularly, it was also true that Tuck was not emotionally equipped for a challenge, which was complicated in the Glenferrie environment.
His father’s greatness preceded him everywhere, so much so that at times he felt he was allowed to contribute little to whatever reputation he had. A question nagged and, in his father’s opinion, contributed to his son’s departure from Hawthorn.
Young Tuck often wondered, apparently, whether he was anything more than an ambassador for the memory of the man who played 426 matches for Hawthorn, won seven premierships and gives his name to the medal awarded to the best player in the preseason competition grand final.
Tuck told Richmond upon his arrival that it was “probably a good thing” to be away from Hawthorn.
“You walk down the hallway and your old man’s in every premiership photo,” he said.
“It’s good to come to a new place and a fresh start.” Tuck senior agrees, even if he had at first enjoyed the idea of his son donning gold and brown.
“I think it was a burden,” Michael says. “Everywhere he went, people would ask him about his old man. At Hawthorn, he reckons he was always walking past a big picture of me on the wall.
"I've always said to him that he's Shane Tuck, not Michael Tuck, but some can handle that pressure and some can't. Some need to take their own time to work through all of that. The best part about playing at Richmond is that it's his own career. He's Shane Tuck of Richmond, which is good for him . . ."
Good, too, for Richmond and Terry Wallace, who were, until two months or so ago, still to make the discovery Rehn had made two years earlier. Tuck went perilously close to being cut at the end of last season, in which he had played only three games, none on the ball. The midfielder that Wallace is now getting more than 20 possessions and a constant supply of hard-won ball from each week was at one stage told he would be unlikely to survive the new coach's cull.
"Terry actually told Shane that he didn't know whether he would stay on the list, so it was close again," Tuck snr said.
As it happened, Wallace cut the likes of the popular Tim Fleming instead.
"Shane was one of the last ones on our list, but I thought there was something there that I had to be sure about first," Wallace told The Age earlier in the year. "It was in the back of my mind, too, that his father played a lot of reserves footy before he made it. I took that into account."
Last Sunday, Rehn watched Tuck redirect the flow of the game against Port Adelaide, which had led by as much as 28 points in the second term. The Tigers were a step off the early pace but not Tuck, who was up with the tempo from the outset. He refused to yield, as he had refused to do against Geelong in the team's horrible first-round hiding, and as others joined him, the momentum of the contest swung.
Michael Tuck proudly described it as his son's best AFL performance. For Rehn, it was an opportunity to reminisce, and, in a way, also feel proud.
"Of all the young fellas at Hawthorn at that time, he was the most intense. He was quick, tallish and he hit the ball hard. He moved through a contest at real pace and that's what I was watching," Rehn says.
"That, and the hunger and anger he has inside of him. Not a bad anger, but an aggressive, ferocious side to his personality. He wouldn't harm anyone deliberately. He's not a dirty player at all, but he goes at the footy and never takes a second step.
"Finally, he's being placed around the 50-50 contests, where he is an absolute natural."
MICHAELBORN 24/6/53
HEIGHT 188cm
WEIGHT 74kg
RECRUITED FROM Berwick
GAMES 426
■ Started as a full-forward
■ Played 50 reserves games (22 in 1971, 20 in 1972, 7 in 1973, 1 in 1985)
■ Career spanned 1972-91, ending in AFL records for most games played (426), most finals (39), most grand finals (11), and most premierships (7)
■ Won premierships in 1976, ‘78, ‘83, ‘86, ‘88-89, ‘91, the last four as captain
■ Is the oldest ever premiership player – 38 years, 95 days in 1991
SHANEBORN 24/12/81
HEIGHT 188cm
WEIGHT 89kg
RECRUITED FROM Drouin/Dandenong U18/West Adelaide
GAMES 9
GOALS 5
■ Rookie listed by Hawthorn 2001-02
■ Played for West Adelaide in SANFL under Shaun Rehn in 2003
■ Picked at No.73 by Richmond in 2003 national draft
■ Played 38 AFL reserves/VFL matches (2 for Hawthorn reserves 1999, 6 for Box Hill 2000, 14 for Box Hill 2001, 16 for Coburg 2004), and 19 games for West Adelaide in SANFL (2003)
■ AFL senior debut in round 14, 2004, aged 22, v Brisbane Lions
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2005/05/06/1115092684009.html
