For the first time in his career, it doesn’t hurt to remember for Zach Tuohy.
Pained by near misses over the journey, Tuohy finally tasted premiership success in 2022, with he and 18 others breaking through for a maiden flag.
It has been a long five months since, but the 33-year-old is regularly transported back to that day at a moment’s notice.
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“The fun thing about it is for the most part you just go about your day then you sort of re-remember it every day,” he told foxfooty.com.au.
“You kind of get to relive it again, every now and then you‘ll just pull the medal out and have a look, it just hits you all over again.
“It’s strange, I made no secret about the fact it was pretty much the only thing driving me the last couple of years, we’d come close and not quite gotten there.
“It just feels good, I don’t know how to describe it, it just feels good going to training, you’re so happy you finally being able to get there, especially after so much criticism of how we’ve gone about it.”
That criticism had reached fever pitch in recent years after a string of losses at the pointy end of the season, with 2021 ending in an 83-point humiliation at the hands of eventual premiers Melbourne.
It was a similar streak to the 2021 Dees that the Cats enjoyed in 2022, winning 16 straight games en route to the flag.
Having achieved the ultimate, it’s ironically the losses that haunted Tuohy he finds himself circling back to in order to maintain the rage.
“The pain from losing prelims and grand finals if anything is still more real than the joy of winning it. You still remember what it felt like walking in after those losses,” he said.
“The reality is if you sign up to play footy at the top level you have to accept that almost every year is going to end in disaster, just statistically. We‘re pretty keen to avoid that feeling. Going back-to-back is really hard, but I just find it hard to think we’re not a better team this year than we were last year.
“We lost Joel (Selwood) … there’s going to be a few of us that have to pick up the load, but it’s just such a happy place to be in, given with how he went out I think everyone’s comfortable with it.”
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Geelong’s off-season additions are not what one would regularly expect for a premiership-winning side.
An extraordinary draft haul saw them add three former top 20 picks and land pick No.7 as part of a trade for one of them, with Jack Bowes’ exit from the Gold Coast Suns an extravagant salary dump of sorts.
It was a deal that had the AFL world buzzing at the time, with many including Tuohy perplexed.
“When the club posted the Jack Bowes trade, I genuinely thought it was a typo,” he said.
“I thought ‘that makes no sense, you can’t give up what we gave up and then get back what we got’, so that seemed like a good deal.”
More good deals resulted in the arrival of young forward Ollie Henry from Collingwood and midfielder Tanner Bruhn from Greater Western Sydney, while pick No.7 eventually became Jhye Clark, who has moulded himself on Selwood.
All of those additions look set to shine in their own way.
“We were delighted to get Ollie, he’s a freak from what I’ve seen so far,” Tuohy said.
“He’s freakish in what he does, everything he touches kind of stands out. Tanner has been super impressive, I wasn‘t fully sure what to expect. I knew what his skillset was but I’d never really seen it up close, he’s pretty ferocious in underneath. It’s not really the player I realised he was.
“Clarky could easily play, Bowesy has got plenty of experience at the top level, he’s ready to go.”
While he spent much of his time in the back half for the Suns, Bowes was pitched a move into the midfield when the Cats were courting him.
It’s a position Bowes thrived in throughout his junior career and the Cats look set to be true to their word.
“I think so (he’ll play midfield),” Tuohy said.
“It’s such a good trait to have if you can flick between positions. I obviously spent a lot of time back and on the wing, Issy (Isaac Smith) goes wing, forward and we’ve got a lot of guys who split from the midfield out and we like to manage the time of the guys who go through the midfield.
“Having someone who could maybe slide from halfback back inside, which I can’t do, it just means the balance of the team is going to be really strong.
“I think he’s clearly a midfielder by trade, but it doesn’t hurt he can play somewhere else.”
