Carlton fans heading to Mandurah’s Rushton Park on Friday afternoon might want to consider arming themselves with the Irish tricolour flag, in tribute to the three Irishmen taking to the field for the first time together in the dark Navy Blue.
Perhaps it’s history in the making when Ciaran Byrne, Ciaran Sheehan and Zach Tuohy line up for Carlton in the visitors’ much-anticipated NAB Challenge contest with West Coast, for as far as can be ascertained, three Irishmen have never before represented the same League team at senior level.
The moment has not been lost on Tuohy the elder with 76 senior matches to his name, nor for that matter the four-gamer Sheehan and least of all the latest international rookie “Casey” Byrne.
“As soon as I came to Carlton this was the first thing I ever wanted to do, to play football with Ciaran and Zach,” Byrne said not long after decamping the team bus in Mandurah.
“Sitting up in the stands was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be out there playing with them.”
The substantial presence of both Tuohy and Sheehan has clearly aided and abetted Byrne’s cause at Carlton, particularly Tuohy – “the Daddy role-player to me and my mentor this year”.
“Zach has always said to me ‘make sure you enjoy your football because if you’re not going to enjoy your football you’re not going to want to be here’,” Byrne said.
“He’s told me to just soak it all up, take everything as it goes, learn as much as you can about the game and just absorb it.”
Word travels fast of course, and the good folks back in Byrne’s hometown of Louth are already onto the fact that three boys are taking to the paddock.
“A lot of people have been texting me already, wishing me well for the game. I’m pretty sure they’ll be able to live stream the game and my Dad’s on top of that. I reckon there’ll be a few people up early on Friday morning just to watch the game.”
Byrne is in a good place, having fared impressively in the past two Carlton intra-club matches.
As he said in echoing the sentiments of any new recruit: “To be able to get in a couple of games and get your hands on the pill is much more exciting than running around the park trying to get fit”.
Tuohy too was mindful of the moment, recalling Collingwood’s three Irishmen Marty Clarke, Caolan Mooney and Paul Cribbin recently frequenting the Westpac Centre, “although I don’t know that they ever played together”.
“It’s nice for three Irish guys to play in the one team. It’s never happened before and you really don’t know whether it will ever happen again, so it’s nice to be involved, ” said Tuohy, himself cherry ripe after an injury-free, uninterrupted pre-season.
“This is just a real honour. I remember playing with Setanta (O’hAilpin) when he was here and I got such a buzz out of playing alongside him - to say I was one of a bunch of young lads from the country to do something for the very first time.”
Proudly declaring his status as the resident Irish elder, Tuohy said he’d taken a particular interest in Byrne’s progress through the pre-season “and he’s been really impressive in the intra-club games so far”.
“And I’ve no doubt that he (Byrne) is going to play AFL this year,” he said.
