Zach Tuohy


Zach Tuohy is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the Geelong Football Club in the Australian Football League. He previously played for the Carlton Football Club from 2010 to 2016. Tuohy grew up in Ireland and played Gaelic football before making a code switch to Australian rules football.

Gaelic football

Tuohy began his sporting career as a Gaelic footballer at the Portlaoise club. He became a regular in Laois underage county sides. He won a Leinster Minor Football Championship with them in 2007.
Tuohy represented Ireland in International rules football in both the 2011 and 2013 series. He scored a goal in the first Test in 2013 at Breffni Park.

Australian football

Carlton

Tuohy attracted the attention of Australian rules football recruiters from the Carlton Football Club in the Australian Football League, a club based in the inner city of Melbourne. During 2009, Tuohy travelled to Melbourne to undergo a four-week trial with the club. The club was sufficiently impressed, and offered Tuohy an International Rookie contract. This contract ensured Tuohy would be recruited by Carlton; he was then selected with the club's sixth round selection in the 2010 AFL rookie draft as a formality. Tuohy became the fourth Irish player to spend time on the Carlton list.
Tuohy began the 2010 season playing in the club's, the Northern Bullants. He developed as a tagger, and then as a rebounding half-back. He was temporarily elevated to the senior list in place of the injured Luke Mitchell in early 2011, and he made his AFL debut in Round 11 against, and went on to play eleven games for the season. By 2012, he was a regular in the Carlton team, and in 2013 he played every match for the season and finished seventh in the club Best and Fairest. Over this time, Tuohy became noted for his long, accurate kicking, and regularly drifted from the backline to half-forward to kick long goals from beyond the 50m line; he had shown a similar aptitude for long-range kicking in Gaelic football, in which he was his county's designated kicker for 45m plus penalty kicks.
Tuohy had a strong season in 2015, running third in the John Nicholls Medal count and being selected as the small defender in the 2015 AFL Coaches Association All-Australian team, by virtue of polling the most votes of any small defender in the AFL Coaches Association MVP award. He played his 100th game in early 2016, becoming only the fifth Irish player in the league to reach the milestone.

Geelong

At the conclusion of the 2016 season, Tuohy requested a trade from Carlton and he nominated as his preferred destination. He was officially traded to Geelong in October.
On 21 July 2018, Tuohy took a contested mark with 10 seconds of play remaining and then kicked a goal after the siren to secure Geelong a two-point victory against Melbourne.

Statistics

! scope="row" style="text-align:center" | 2011
! scope="row" style="text-align:center" | 2012
! scope="row" style="text-align:center" | 2013
! scope="row" style="text-align:center" | 2014
! scope="row" style="text-align:center" | 2015
! scope="row" style="text-align:center" | 2016
! scope="row" style="text-align:center" | 2017
! colspan=3| Career
! 145
! 43
! 28
! 1469
! 962
! 2501
! 487
! 278
! 0.3
! 0.2
! 9.8
! 6.5
! 16.1
! 3.3
! 1.9