Shane Tuck had the difficulty of following an illustrious father, who up until four years ago had played in more games than any other footballer in the competition's history.
Yet Tuck managed to carve out a distinctive identity, separating himself from his fabled lineage to become a 173-game player after overcoming rejection at Hawthorn, the club where his father, Michael had played 426 VFL/AFL games and which joined Richmond in mourning Tuck's sudden death on Monday.
Shane Tuck was bred to play Australian football at the highest level. The son of a seven-time premiership player and bona fide legend at Hawthorn, he was also the nephew of the explosive, phenomenally-gifted Gary Ablett senior, his mother Fay's brother. His younger brother Travis played 20 games for the Hawks from 2006 until 2010.
If such breeding and background was advantageous to Tuck, his AFL career was a study in persistence, grit and self-improvement; his path to those 173 games was due to pluck, not genetic endowment.
Drafted by the Hawks from the Dandenong Stingrays as a lowly rookie – pick No.24 in the 2000 rookie draft – Tuck was discarded after the 2001 season without playing a single game.
In 2003, he went to West Adelaide in the SANFL, at the behest of the coach, the former Adelaide great Shaun Rehn. There, he caught the eye of Richmond's football manager Greg Miller, who had seen Tuck kick the winning goal on the siren from a long distance.
The Tigers drafted him late, at pick 73 in the 2003 national draft, a speculative choice that would net the club a flint-hard player who would finish inside the top 10 in the best and fairest seven times.
In his first season at Richmond, the last for senior coach Danny Frawley, Tuck remained a marginal player.
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But the incoming coach, Terry Wallace, had played with Tuck's father in three Hawthorn premierships. The Tigers were not convinced about Tuck and were considering keeping either him or, another player, Tim Fleming.
Wallace, however, knew that Tuck's father, who had played two full seasons in the reserves at Hawthorn, was a noted late developer and, as Miller confirmed on Monday, this awareness of Tuck's heritage influenced the decision to keep him.
At 189cm and 92kg, Tuck played a different style to his rangy, skilful father. He was a contested-ball beast, who, as one Richmond official recalled, had a record 14 tackles in Damien Hardwick's first win with the Tigers in 2010.
Miller called Tuck "a see ball, get ball" player, who played on instincts.
"You didn't give him too many instructions. You had to let him play his game," he said.
Of the man, Miller added: "He was popular with teammates in the rooms."
Wayne Campbell, who was Tuck's skipper in 2004 and an assistant coach for Tuck's final five seasons at Tigerland, said Tuck was "a unique person'' who turned into a cult figure for the club's faithful.
"He's sort the bloke you smile when you think of,'' said Campbell. "He was so loveable, unique, fun, tough.''
Campbell observed that Tuck had "really good finesse with his hands'' and that team mates were "always confident to kick to him one on one'' due to his aerial prowess.
Tuck famously almost ended the career of Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson in 2010, when, running to boot the match-winning goal, he was brought down by a lunging tackle from behind by Sam Mitchell; had Tuck converted, the view within Hawthorn was Clarkson would have been sacked by Jeff Kennett.
Tuck's career at the Tigers spanned a period when Richmond struggled, financially and on the field, but he was there, under Hardwick, just as the club was emerging from a dismal decade.
His final game was his first and only final, in 2013, before 90,000-plus fans, when Carlton overran Richmond in the second half.
Post-football, Tuck briefly turned his hands to boxing, fighting on the undercard to the Danny Green v Anthony Mundine bout at the Adelaide Oval in 2017, a career move that encapsulated how Tuck played and made the grade in footy: the hard way.
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