Jack Riewoldt AFL 360 interview, 300 games, club record holders, how many goals, all-time ranking, Riewoldt familyDavid Zita
Fox Sports
July 13th, 2021 9:42 pmRichmond champion Jack Riewoldt joined AFL 360 ahead of his 300th game for an emotional reflection on his remarkable footy journey.
Riewoldt will on Friday notch his 300th game, another accolade in a career that includes three premierships, three Coleman medals, three All-Australians and two best-and-fairests.
In a wide-ranging interview with Gerard Whateley and Mark Robinson, along with father Chris and cousin Nick, Jack was emotional after a touching montage of messages from friends and family before reflecting on his journey - READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW OR WATCH ON FOX FOOTY’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Gerard Whateley: It’s a big week and Nick and your Dad are here with us to reflect as well. It’s also a short week. Are you going to be able to take it in, and is there a moment for reflection and nostalgia in it?
Jack Riewoldt: It’s a short week fitting a lot of things in and I know how important it is to the club as well as myself and obviously my family and everyone that’s been a part of my journey so it’s not one that you can sort of just brush by and play it low key so there’s a lot of things to cover, but it’s gonna be an incredible journey over the next few days leading into the game Friday night and what’s not lost on me is that the importance of Friday night for us and our football club more than anything that we need to get back on track a little bit.
Mark Robinson: There’s two families in all footballer’s lives. There’s your footy family and then there’s your family. Do you get time to think about your family, or do you spend thinking about your football journey?
JR: I think it‘s probably a lot of reflection and I think you fight away to the end of your career and I’ve probably been in that little mental battle for probably this year, just thinking the end is coming and I know that I’m closer to the end than I am the start so there’s been a lot of a lot of thoughts go through my mind about this could be the last time I do this, but this week’s been one where I’ve just sort of really started to play a few memories back in my mind and Carly’s done an amazing job and actually kept a scrapbook and Dad well of every article I’ve been involved in ... it’s amazing when you just look back through and the memories that it brings back and even just parts of games that you think never think about, you read a little scoreline on you read a whole lot you go, holy crap 15 years has gone very, very fast, very fast. I saved this story because I didn’t want to tell anyone else. I remember at draft camp in 2006 Chocco Williams asked me in my interview how many games are you gonna play, and I was pretty cheeky, I said I’ll play 300, he said you know only 1% of players have played 300 games, I said yeah I’ve got that covered and sure enough I’ve come through! I was very forward as a young man and very, very confident and I think it helped me get through early on in my career.
GW: Do you know what the source of the confidence was?
JR: I think my mother’s fairly confident so there’s some sort of genetics I think to do that. I loved sport as a kid and just loved playing and you know I’ve been blessed to have some great role models in my life, especially football. Rooey was probably my hero growing up as a kid and probably still my hero today and I played footy with Jade Rawlings when I was 17 years of age when I was playing for the Tassie devils so I got a great AFL experience there before I even was drafted and then I was under Matthew Richardson for three years and three great Tasmanian champion forwards to ask them anything I wanted to do so. I was always very fortunate.
MR: When you when you started, you were ‘Nick‘s cousin’ ... how proud are you to have forged your own identity?
JR: I still get called Nick a fair bit when I go shopping. My journey has been a bloody hell of a ride. I look at the way it’s happened and current form probably isn’t great but I’m so glad that I experienced the real hardships of finishing last, not winning a lot of games, even down to training in sort of substandard facilities at Punt Road and everything that came with that. I’ve actually now been able to see what it’s like on the other side to winning a premiership, to being in a great facility, to be in a club that just has an amazing culture and develop friendships through that I’ll have forever so I’m glad that’s the way it’s happened. I’m glad that it’s been the hardship, and then the highlights.
GW: If I’ve done the maths right, you’d played 151 games when you came and joined us and 149 we’ve shared together since. There’s a delineation in your career. Our first year was 2016 and that was the year where we all sat here and wondered whether it was actually ever going to happen and then it happens. Can you feel the phases of your career?
JR: There‘s the first five years which we obviously played under Terry Wallace and then a couple of years under Dimma where we really struggled and we finished down the bottom of the ladder and always dreamt of what it’d be like to play finals, and then there was a period through that middle part where we played finals and lose in the first week of the finals ... 2016 happened and then there’s been a big shift and a massive shift since then.
MR: You’re such a scallywag and you’re such a champion of the game but you sort of hold a warm spot with football because crawling up the stairs at the MCG when you were knocked out
GW: Let‘s go to the train station first. What are your recollections of this afternoon in 2014?
JR: So John Vickery was running beside me. I made a blue at a press conference a couple of days earlier and sort of said something that I shouldn’t have said in terms of game plan and it blew up from there. They wanted to sneak me out, John Vickery was supposed to leave my car around near the Tigers superstore at Punt Road and he parked in the wrong spot. I jumped the fence and I landed over the fence with a laptop and I was holding thongs over a barbed wire fence which I thought is pretty bloody good effort to be honest. I landed and just had this moment where I looked into this car on Brunton Avenue there and I saw Mark Stevens looking at me. Next thing you know the media came hooting around the corner and I went into the train station, I didn’t have a Myki. I waited for about an hour just sitting there, didn’t get on a train and just thought what the hell have I done. Funnily enough, I took that Myki along to a comedy day maybe about six weeks after that and we auctioned it off, it had $5 credit and someone bought it for $400!
MR: Look at this (Jack peeking out of the rooms after getting concussed and ruled out of the game in 2011), how old were you there?
JR: That was 2011 and that is against the Saints. I got knocked out in the first quarter, thought I was right to come back on the ground and I can remember just saying ‘Dimma, Dmimma, Dimma’ trying to get his attention because he was coaching from the, from the sidelines at that point. I tried to make myself look like I was right and had a bit of a kick and stuff I then got told I wasn’t going back on and sat in the background with a bit of a frown for the rest of the game. The game was a draw so it gets replayed a lot when we play the Saints, about three weeks ago I just got a barrage of younger players texting me footage and it’s just like am I gonna re-live this every time this game’s on!?
MR: The greatest thing I‘ve seen a player do was get on stage with The Killers after the Grand Final. Every time the song comes on I think of you.
JR: I’ve been banned from singing this actually. It was just so much fun and I remember Rory Sloane text me about a month after and said I am so jealous of you, my favourite band is The Killers and we obviously beat Adelaide in that in that grand final. We sort of bonded over that and played a little bit of footy in pre-season games and it was a hell of a day that one. foreign you guys you’ve lived my, my ultimate day, you know, as I’m so jealous of you, and we sort of we bonded over that and played a little bit of footy in pre-season games together and it was a one hell of a day that one.
GW: You’ve lived the full spectrum, that’s how it appears to me - 300 games gives you a long time but you have lived a whole lot from the clown to the darling, from the misery to the ultimate joy, and all that we’ve seen in between. Do you have a sense of that?
JR: Yeah and I think, ultimately, the one thing I‘m most proud of is that I reckon I’ve gone from being a selfish player, and not ultimately selfish but just not understanding what it’s like to be a great team player, to what I feel like is one of my greatest strengths now that I’m certainly one of our best team players in terms of the way I go about it and changed my whole mindset on how I wanted to play football and what I wanted to be known for. I suppose it‘s sort of coincided with reaching that ultimate success as well as a team.
GW: So good genes helps. so carriages just half responsible. Chris your dad has come in to join us, he’s a legend of Tassie footy. Chris, welcome. What’s your sense of your son reaching 300 games?
Chris Riewoldt: Mostly proud. It’s a wonderful achievement and it’s something I never ever dreamt that he would be, you know, getting to. Most people say your son goes and plays football you’d be happy if they played one game, but you know he’s been productive in the ways he’s played. He’s been able to win best and fairests and goalkicking and All Australians. To do it over a 300-game period is just a huge effort to get all those accolades and also play all those games.
MR: When did you think that Jack had it in him to be a good footballer and could be an AFL player?
CR: He didn‘t start playing till pretty late, but he played his first senior game of football in Tasmania with when he was 15. I remember in his first game him getting a kick on the boundary line about 45 out from goals and kicking it through the goals and I was with a guy called Scott Way who used to play with Hawthorn who said ‘he’s going to be alright your boy’, probably then I knew.
JR: I can distinctly remember I might’ve been 16 years of age and Dad was pretty handy player and the BnF is named after him and Dad said to me I think you might have me covered as a player and I was like, holy crap.
GW: Nick an illustrious 336-game career, is he a worthy member of your club?
Nick Riewoldt: It was inevitable. There are certain things that I‘ve been able to tick off and just one by one, along he comes! He takes them off me. He’s got his flags but you know at least I’ve got 700 goals. He take’s that, he’s even taken my mark! We’re so proud as a family. I made it. It’s interesting, when he came into the league I’d been around for half a dozen years already so we’ve always had that relationship and that friendship in the shared experience, but you go into another club and then that’s your family. To have seen him ride that journey with the Richmond football club ... my last year was the emergence of Richmond from a long slumber - I had no concept of what Jack was a part of at Richmond, because in my time in footy I’d never seen it, I’d never seen them become the juggernaut that they’ve become over the last five year. For Jack to have played such a massive role in it, it’s yeah it’s been, it’s just been so much fun to watch. And now on the other side of it’s been a lens to keep us all connected as a family in the game, which has been amazing.
MR: Do you ever talk when you have a few bees together about having kick-to-kick in the backyard ...
NR: We both thought the exact same thing then! We tried this one year at around 2008 on the east coast ... a tiny little school with an oval maybe 60 metres long. In, they‘ve got a tiny little school it’s a tiny little town that the, the ovals may be 60 meters long and there’s a set of goalpost and we had a three-on-three or a four-on-four and I partially tore my ACL. I had a partially torn ACL and made it back for the start of the 2009 season. I reckon that was the last time. The boys now though - whenever Jack comes over, I mean, James told me the other day I’m now the third best footballer. Jack’s number one, James says he’s number two and I’m number three so the boys love it.
GW: Thanks for sharing it with us tonight.
JR: Thank you guys and thanks for being along for the journey for the last five years, I‘d say. I do really mean it when I say I’ve grown up and a lot of people at the football club have had to do it but certainly being a part of this organisation and this show has helped me grow up a lot.
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