WHEN Zach Tuohy landed at Tullamarine airport in 2009, the Irishman knew who Jim Stynes was, but he had no concept of his status in the game or the magnitude of his games record. 

Before the Portlaoise product would reach a debut, he would be forced to complete an old-school apprenticeship in the VFL. At Carlton at that time, that meant starting with Northern Bullants’ reserves – essentially the Blues’ thirds – before ascending the selection pyramid.

Back then, Tuohy was puttering around Melbourne in a dodgy 1995 Honda Civic that constantly overheated and broke down on the way to training at Princes Park or games out at Preston City Oval.

It was a cruel welcome to Australia, but despite some early tears in the car and some serious doubts when his county won the prestigious Leinster club championship in his first year out, the tough times didn’t deter the son of a former prisoner officer.

Tuohy dug in and made his debut as the sub in round 11 of 2011, playing in the navy blue on 120 occasions before securing a move down the highway to Geelong at the end of 2016, where he has added 144 appearances in the hoops and last year joined Tadhg Kennelly – and teammate Mark O’Connor – as the only players from the Emerald Isle to win a premiership.

Now 14 years after accepting an offer from Carlton to try this foreign game in a foreign land, Tuohy will break Stynes’ Irish games record of 264 games when he runs out at GMHBA Stadium against North Melbourne on Sunday.

Gerard Sholly was the one who found him. Now TLA’s head of cricket, Sholly was then an international recruiting consultant for Carlton who first spotted Tuohy playing as a 16-year-old for County Laois in an All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park.

Tuohy thought it was a prank when Sholly first picked up the phone, but quickly realised it wasn’t. He attended an AFL camp at the University of Limerick in County Munster before heading to Melbourne for a trial.

Sholly’s fingerprints are all over the AFL’s decades-long infatuation with Irish talent and he can remember a confident teenage Tuohy determined to make the most of the opportunity to be a professional sportsman.

“You can never predict that a player is going to play 265 games whether they come from Laois or Laverton or wherever they are from, but he had a determination and he was embraced at Carlton at the time,” Sholly explained to AFL.com.au this week.

“There is no question that any player that comes from Ireland or interstate, there are times where they feel uncomfortable in a foreign place. It is a mental strength that you’ve got to have and a determination to stick it out. There are going to be failures along the way, but as someone once said: plenty of fruit in failure. He just wanted to put his head down and make it. And he has.

“He should be so proud of what he has achieved. I’m just delighted and thrilled and happy for him. I’m really respectful of how difficult it was for him to come out when he did.”

Darren Harris was a development coach at Carlton when Tuohy first arrived and started training at a venue that was then named Visy Park. Along with soon-to-be senior coaches Alan Richardson and David Teague, Harris was instrumental in teaching Tuohy the fundamentals of the game. How to kick. Where to run. What the rules are. All the little things that everyone else learns as a kid.

Tuohy came straight from the airport to the Carlton Football Club with Ciaran Byrne – another Irishman the Blues signed – and instantly flaunted a fluency and confident kicking action that has been exploited for more than a decade and will be remembered as one of the best Irish ball-users the game has seen.

“I was asked to go and have a kick with them and I remember being on the oval and explaining that this was basically how you go about kicking a footy. Ciaran wasn’t a natural, but Zach kicked the footy to me and from the first time he kicked it he had an outstanding leg on him. He was quite confident, went back and went whack. I’ll never forget it to tell you the truth. We were on Princes Park. Just the way he hit it straight away,” Harris said this week from Western Australia, where he is now the coach of WAFL side West Perth.

“My first impression was he was really confident when he kicked the footy. Part of that for me, which I learnt in the time I worked with him, was he was highly competitive; he wanted to win. I think that’s driven him all the way along. He doesn’t like to lose. He loves to be involved. I think that inner competitive nature that he’s had to be the best he can be has just kept him relevant the whole time. I don’t think he wants to lose any one-on-one, any game, it just means so much to him. That has been the main driver for him.”

Since the turn of the century, not many recruiters have been as involved in scouting Irishmen than former Carlton recruiting boss Wayne Hughes. Across multiple stints at St Kilda, Fremantle and the Blues, Hughes used his network to track a stack of elite GAA and hurling talent and convinced them to try a game on the other side of the world.

When you consider what he cost and where he came from, Tuohy has proven to be one of Hughes most successful recruits across a recruiting career that spanned from the 1980s to the 2020s.

“Gerard Sholly was our working man on the ground. No one understands the Irish programming better than Gerard. It is very hard to get your head around how the whole competition works and he knows what to look for,” Hughes explained.

“We invited about 20 to a camp in Limerick including Zach. The vision was just obvious that he was a star player. A lot has to go right from there, but we knew we had something. No one could have predicted it would work out like this, though. I think his decision to go to Geelong was so smart given it is a big country town and it has helped extend his career.”

Tuohy has been on course for this record for some time and been asked about it often. The answer has always been the same. It doesn’t sit comfortably with him, given Stynes’ on-field record and contribution to the game and wider society in the years between his retirement and passing.

“It’s a strange one. I’m obviously proud I’ve been able to play as long as I have, but he’s everyone’s hero. You almost feel guilty playing more games than him,” Tuohy said this week.

“It’s probably, mostly, because I don’t feel like I belong in Jim’s category as a player and obviously in terms of legacy, so it’s a strange one. I don’t really know how to feel.

“I knew of Jim Stynes (when I arrived), obviously. I don’t think I appreciated the significant impact he had on the game or his legacy post-career. I only got to appreciate that when I came out. I must admit, I was blown away to see how significant a character he was.”

For as long as the Irish head to Australia to play this game, Stynes will always be remembered. And so will Tuohy. The man from Portlaoise who reaches new territory this weekend.