WITH his induction - finally - into the Australian Football Hall of Fame this year, St Kilda champion Nick Riewoldt has created a nice piece of history for himself.
He is the first member of the Hall of Fame who was also the first overall draft selection at the AFL Draft.
That was historic, given that when his name was called out by the Saints in late 2000, he was the first No.1 pick not to hail from one of the heartland football states.
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Yes, the Riewoldt family is well known in Tasmanian football circles, but having grown up on the Gold Coast, he was an early star of the Queensland talent pathways that today is producing all sorts of future stars but back then at the turn of the century, it was a bit more of a lottery.
Riewoldt wasn't good enough even to make Gold Coast representative squads as a younger teenager but once he came under the wing of former Sydney star Mark Browning, a huge developmental figure in the game in Quensland, he started to thrive as a tall and athletic key-position player.
He was a late inclusion as a bottom-ager in the 1999 Queensland under-18 team and played well at centre half-back against, ironically, Tasmania, where his raw athleticism made the scouts sit up and take notice.
He played well for the rest of the carnival and that translated into his draft year where he dominated as a rangy key-position prospect for various teams including the Queensland under-18s, Southport and the Brisbane Lions reserves where among his teammates were Simon Black, Luke Power, Tim Notting, Aaron Shattock, Daniel Bradshaw and even occasionally, Alastair Lynch, as he returned from injury.
"I was very much a boy playing with men and playing men's footy. But it kind of, I think, humanised it and made it seem a little bit more attainable," Riewoldt said.
But as he catapulted into contention to be a high draft pick in 2000, he was never going to be a Brisbane player – he lived 70km from the Brisbane CBD, too far for the Lions to claim him as a zone selection, which was controversial at the time and later led to a tweak of the rules.
So, it was off to St Kilda, arriving at the club not long after the struggling club had reached high to appoint the legendary Malcolm Blight as coach. Blight was wooed from coaching retirement – and sacked after just 15 games – a move that was very St Kilda of its time.
Blight's last game as coach was Riewoldt's first as a player. A series of knee injuries curtailed much of his debut season and Riewoldt lays claim to what he thinks might be another record – five consecutive games of footy under five different coaches. His last game with Southport in 2000, followed the next year by one game for the Springvale reserves and then one for the seniors (Springvale was St Kilda's first VFL affiliate club), his AFL debut game under Blight and then the next one under stand-in coach Grant Thomas.
Blight had an edict that no player could touch a football until certain fitness criteria had been met, so it was a tough and lonely introduction to the AFL.
"I was out running laps of Monash Uni by myself. And meanwhile, my housemate Justin Koschitzke was winning the Rising Star. It was a pretty grim," he said.
But that would change under Thomas and 12 months later, he was the Rising Star.
Saints forward Aaron Hamill came across from Carlton, took Riewoldt under his wing and he thrived.
"I was always a hard trainer, but I think that's one of the things that takes time, is learning how to live the lifestyle, how you think you're training hard, but you've always got a bit more," he said.
"So, I was really lucky. He (Hamill) was just ferocious, the way he went about his training and his preparation. And I was just lucky that he put his arm around me, and he deserves a lot of credit for what I was able to achieve, not just in those first few years, but my entire career."
All the weapons that Riewoldt possessed came to the fore in 2002, his first full season. He was supremely fit and athletic, and able to read the play so Thomas gave Riewoldt free licence to go where he needed to be and to try to always be within a kick of the ball and launch himself at it. Over the course of the home and away season he led the AFL for marks taken.
"Not many coaches would be doing that now. And I did it really well," he said.
In the final game of the year, Riewoldt went forward and kicked six goals. It sealed the Rising Star award and set the template for his next 15 seasons.
"What I was really good at was repeat speed. I felt like I could run at speeds and push myself to places other people couldn't go," he said.
"And whether that was in the first quarter, the sixth lead getting on the end of it, and the defender dropping off, or whether it was the last quarter, and I've been doing it all day."
The sight of Riewoldt working up and down the ground brought joy to Saints fans as their team became almost instant premiership contenders.
"I was a good runner, but I felt like what I did really well was I gave the kicker so many different options," he said.
"If I was leading at a player and they didn't kick it to me, I knew they didn't like what they would see. So, I would, I would hook, go again, change direction and get in behind them and beat them back. My ability to turn a lead into a 200-metre running race in multiple directions was my greatest strength, to the point that other players couldn't go with me."
Ross Lyon took over as coach in 2007 when tactics were evolving at a rapid pace and made Riewoldt his captain, a position he held for the next 10 years.
"Rossy was revolutionary in the way that he got us playing the game. And the one thing that he was so good at was getting you into a possibility mindset, like, ‘if we do X, Y and Z, this is what's possible'," he said.
Riewoldt led St Kilda through a dominant period where the club achieved everything except win that desperately-longed-for second premiership. The period was littered with heartbreak, preliminary final defeats in 2004 and 2008 and the Grand Final defeats in 2009 to Geelong and 2010 to Collingwood, the latter after the draw the week before.
The 2009 loss eats at him the most. Had they capitalised on their first-half dominance, the Saints would have closed the door early on the Cats.
"I think in the absence of an exclamation point being a premiership, it kind of becomes the sum of all parts for me," he said when asked about his career highlights.
Riewoldt's induction into the Australian Football Hall of Fame is two years overdue. Technically, he is a member of the 2023 cohort, but at the start of that year he and his wife Cath relocated to her native Texas with their family for what was supposed to be a 12-month sabbatical.
They then chose to extend that for another year; however, Riewoldt was sorely tempted to come back for last year's event given that his childhood hero, fellow Queenslander Jason Dunstall, was being elevated to Legend status. But with their boys amid quintessential American experiences – baseball playoffs and summer camp – they decided to hold off for one more year.
So, 2025 it is.
"I've gone from being the kid opening footy cards to sitting in the room with the players whose cards that I wanted to get, and that's a cool thing to have done with your life," he said.
"But I'm grateful, because it gives all of the people that were a part of the journey a touch point into the accolade, whether they're there on the night or, I've spoken to them in the lead up, it's a nice moment to be able to reflect and be grateful to all of those that contributed to the journey."
Nick Riewoldt
St Kilda (2001-17): 336 games, 718 goals
Best and fairest: 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2014
Top 3 best and fairest: 2008, 2013, 2016
All-Australian: 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009 (capt), 2014 (vice-capt)
Leading goalkicker: 2008, 2009, 2013, 2014
Captain: 2005, 2007-16
