Ty Zantuck
By Chris Greenway

I was surprised when we picked Ty up in the draft. His father Shane was a pretty handy and somewhat fiery player for 3 clubs, none of them being Richmond. He is best known for telling supercoach Ron Barassi what he thought of him in no uncertain terms when at Melbourne. Someone remarked when we drafted Ty that he hoped he'd get along better with Danny than Shane had with Barass.

Ty's first game was against Essendon and while we got belted the one good thing was that I thought we'd found a real goer in young Ty. The kid kept trying all afternoon and never dropped his head once. He got more game time that season and last year was his first real regular playing season. He was a hard nut, something Richmond needed until this year when Coughlan matured and we got Kane Johnson. I'd put Tim Fleming in that category too and Staff has got players deadset scared of him now. Ty played a very valuable role in defence last year and was able to use his hardness to take some of the physical pressure off Campbell. He kicked a couple of freakish soccer goals too, David Beckham couldn't have bent them any better.

He's started off slow this year and I believe that's for a couple of reasons, one is that opponents have worked him out a little, but he's starting to cope with that now. The other was that after suffering a broken cheekbone from an unprovoked attack outside a nightclub he had virtually no pre season, so it took him a little while to get his fitness up to scratch. Keep an eye on him, he's one of the young Tigers who will form the nucleus of the side in years to come.