In an extract from his new autobiography, Zach Tuohy looks back on his Grand Final success with Geelong in 2022 – and what it meant to him to be able to fly the Portlaoise flag on the biggest day of his career.
Grand Final Day is the biggest day of the year in Melbourne.
You’re either going to the Grand Final or you’re watching at the pub or you’re going to a friend’s barbeque – or you hate the two teams playing so much that you don’t watch at all.
But everyone is involved and invested in some way. This Grand Final Day was more significant than usual.
There hadn’t been a Grand Final at the MCG for two years. Because of Covid, the 2020 decider that we lost to Richmond had been at the Gabba in Brisbane, and in 2021 it had been staged in Perth. Melbournians had been starved of the biggest day on the footy calendar, and now it was back.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that was certainly the case with the G on Grand Final Day. It looked radiant. As we approached on the bus, it was gleaming. It was a pristine day – just perfect for football.
I had an American heavy-metal band called Pantera streaming through my AirPods during the bus journey. ‘Cowboys from Hell’ and ‘Cemetery Gates’ were my chosen songs, and I wanted to bury the Swans’ title hopes.
They’re not just wicked pump-up songs. I like a blast from the past in my ears when I’m preparing for big games.
It helps evoke that feeling of when I was growing up and sport was just for fun. It also reminds me of how far I’ve come. It was my brother Noel John who first introduced me to
Pantera. I thought of how proud he would be to know that on the biggest day of my career, he was still the strongest influence on my playlist. When I first started listening to ‘Cowboys from Hell’ there were no AirPods.
Back then, I had a Discman and would listen through my headphones as I walked to Downey’s, our local shop. A lot had changed, but a lot had stayed the same.
I’m pleased to say that on Grand Final Day, in the biggest match I had ever played, I was in the zone.
On that beautiful last Saturday in September, it wasn’t just me, it felt like the whole team was.
The further we went into the lead, the more we allowed ourselves to celebrate. It was raining goals and, after each one, we celebrated as a team. I would point to where I knew
my family was in the stand.
I thought about what my sister would be thinking of it all. From sending me money via Western Union, to this. I thought about my parents back home. My mother was so notoriously bad at watching matches, but we were so far ahead that maybe even she would be watching the second half? It turned out she only watched the last 10 or 15 minutes.
Being able to enjoy the moment while still in the match was not something I had imagined. I knew we had the ability to smash them, but I hadn’t envisaged being so far ahead that we could take it all in and enjoy the process of it.
At three-quarter-time, our skipper told it as it was. As he always did. ‘We have it won. Let’s just enjoy this last quarter, boys.’ Can you actually believe it? We got to ‘just enjoy’ the last quarter of the Grand Final. That is literally what footy dreams are made of.
I’ll never forget the feeling of knowing I was about to do what I’d always wanted to do – win a Grand Final. To beat Brisbane in the prelim and Sydney in the final, by a lot – to
beat the two teams I like the least, by a lot … fucking hell. Inject that feeling into me.
There were about 20 seconds to go in the match, and it had been clear for a while that it was absolutely over, beyond doubt. I looked over at the interchange bench and saw that the coaches had come down from the box and were hugging each other. They were starting to celebrate.
It was real. A wave of emotion swept over me. It’s difficult to put into words what it feels like to achieve a dream like that. I almost wrote ‘lifelong dream’, but that isn’t true.
There were two players on the field that day who had grown up with very different dreams.
I grew up wanting to play for Liverpool or Laois. I dreamed of scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup final or in the All-Ireland decider.
When my soccer dreams didn’t materialise, Croke Park, on the biggest day of all, became
my focus. But then along came AFL and, for years, I’d had a different dream. And it had finally happened.
Mark O’Connor was in the same situation. Having grown up wanting to lift the Sam Maguire Cup with Kerry, he too had achieved a dream he couldn’t have fathomed as a child.
To do that together was incredibly special.
I had travelled thousands of miles and lived on the opposite side of the world to my family for this moment.
This would justify all of it. Everything I’d missed. Everything I’d given up, to be here. And my sister was in the crowd to see it. Elation doesn’t even cover it.
After I’d brandished my ‘C’mon the Town’ flag on stage, a Geelong fan helped me continue to put the club on the map.
A man in the crowd called Ed Harcourt had gone to the effort of getting his own Portlaoise flag designed. He had got in touch with Portlaoise GAA to organise a copy of the logo and had it printed to bring to the Grand Final.
I could see it waving behind the goals we were playing into in the last quarter. It was surreal. A Portlaoise GAA flag at the MCG. I couldn’t believe someone would go to the trouble of doing that.
I met him at the boundary, and he took the flag off the stick he’d used to hoist it high into the air and handed it to me so I could wear it. I draped it over my shoulders as we walked around the ground celebrating.
Thanks to him, the photo was printed on newspapers and online all over Ireland. The fact that it was a Portlaoise flag really resonated with people.
Our local club is everything to us. The Portlaoise flag going viral on Grand Final Day is everything the GAA is about.
Because you’re always a club player. Whether you go on to be a county star or you move to another sport, the club is where it all started.
