When he was much younger, Tucker Hume and his twin brother Walker did a lot of scuffling around the house and in the backyard with a soccer ball – it was a natural sibling rivalry.

Maybe one day soon, they’ll renew that competitive fire from their 1-on-1 backyard battles — on a Major League Soccer pitch. While Walker was a second-round selection of FC Dallas, Tucker’s name wasn’t called.

Ottawa Fury FC coach Paul Dalglish quickly signed the 23-year-old Tucker, a 6-foot-5 striker who was a scoring sensation for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, where he was a teammate of his brother. There was a familiarity factor: Hume was on the Austin Aztex team that won a Premier Development League championship with Dalglish as coach in 2013.

“His goal-scoring record in college is fantastic,” said Dalglish. “When I saw him at the (draft) combine — the games they play are a bit possession based, they’re not real games, there were no crosses getting into the box to him so he couldn’t show his strengths. He’s somebody who comes up huge in key moments for any team he plays for. Having somebody with that presence inside the 18-yard box was something we were really keen to get in our recruitment. We felt it was a big hole for us.

“I feel for him that he didn’t get picked up in the MLS Draft. But lucky for us. Things happen for a reason and maybe we can help develop him and he can get back there in the future. You can’t train size. If we can help him become what we think he can become, with his finishing ability, with his touch, with his size, he should aim for that, for sure.”

“Everyone wants to be at the top,” said Hume. “It’s tough for a kid to come in and play in MLS right away so I have to prove myself, score some goals, have someone believe in me and think I can do it at that level.”

Hume reached the NCAA soccer final in 2016 while scoring 18 goals and adding nine assists. Having Walker around, with the competitive brother dynamic, made both better. And it made for an interesting household for parents Andrew and Deanne.

“We were really competitive with each other, whether it was soccer or anything,” said Hume. “Usually, it would end in a fight because we both wanted to win so bad. But that made us tougher. With him being a defender and me being a forward, it was good to play 1v1, challenge each other and get better.”

The boys’ grandfather Tom Franckhauser played four years in the NFL as a defensive back — with the Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings and LA Rams. A trivia note, selected by the Cowboys in the 1960 expansion draft, he was the first Dallas player to touch the ball, returning the opening kickoff.

“I played one tackle football season in middle school,” said Hume, who’s been playing soccer since he was five. “I did a lot of the kicking. I didn’t want to get hurt, plus I liked soccer — there was a lot of movement, a lot of action.”

Three days into camp now, Fury FC, which has jumped from the NASL to USL this season, will continue to train at the RA Centre dome before departing for a week-long camp in Florida Feb. 19.

“You’ve got to be careful, the players come back so keen and motivated to work hard — you have to put the reins on them a bit in these early weeks,” said Dalglish. “The old—school methodology of pre—season was to train people more in the first few weeks of pre—season when they’re the least fittest, which doesn’t really make any sense. It’s a bit backwards. So what we want to try and do, especially with a bye the first week of the season, is to get into this gradually, allow them to ease into it this first week. I’m really pleased with the speed people are picking things up.”