Ahead of his third AFL season, defender/midfielder Darcy Tucker is looking to build on an already impressive career as one of Fremantle’s developing young players.
For a 21-year-old, Tucker boasts a considerable amount of AFL experience, playing 31 games and impressing with his speed and agility.
In the pre-season, Tucker showed signs he could be on the verge of a breakout year, stepping up on the wing in the absence of Stephen and Bradley Hill.
Tucker’s 27 disposals against West Coast on Sunday at HBF Arena was four better than his career best in an AFL game, while also collecting eight marks and delivering four inside 50s.
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“I’m just trying to improve myself each week and run as hard as I can to try to get a bit of the footy as well,” Tucker said.
“My main focuses are to be hard at the footy, increase my contested ball and that usually gets me into the game.
“I usually play as a winger but the Hill brothers are obviously in there as well, so without them there was me, Ed Langdon and Danyle Pearce playing that role.
"I thought we did really well."
Tucker says Fremantle is working to build on a promising pre-season and bring the same intent into round one against Port Adelaide on 24 March.
After two pre-season wins against West Coast and a narrow loss to Adelaide, Tucker said the challenge was keeping the same level of intensity when competing for premiership points.
“We played a really good brand of team footy and that’s how we want to play and set ourselves for this year,” Tucker said.
“The pre-season’s done now but it does count. We’re practicing to play the brand of footy we want to bring to round one.
“We’ll take out the positives and RFIs (room for improvement) and look to improve again. We want to bring the same effort against Port in round one and bring that all year.”
