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Retired Nick Riewoldt

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Wouldn't be surprised if Nick is a late withdrawal this week with cramp ... he signed an awful lot of autographs today.

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When Nick Riewoldt backs out of his driveway or jumps on the team bus on the way to a game, he always calls his old man, Joe. It’s something he has always done and something that might only have one more call to go.

They don’t talk too much about the two hours ahead; they touch base and continue a tradition that has provided the St Kilda champion with a comforting distraction before he rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

It didn’t start ahead of Riewoldt’s debut midway through 2001, but only because of circumstances. Back then, Joe and Nick’s Mum Fiona still lived on the Gold Coast, and a delayed flight caused the pair to miss the first half of Nick’s first game.

But from Nick’s second game onwards, father and son started a tradition that has lasted the duration of his 17-year career.

“From his second game onwards, when Nick either got in his car to go to the game or if he was away, just as he got on the team bus, he would give me a call,” Riewoldt told saints.com.au ahead of what could be his sons final game on Sunday.

“I think other than that first game, we missed probably three or four weeks, which is not bad out of 335 games.

“Invariably the discussion would come back to football, but it was usually just about what had happened that week in our lives or how we were both going.

“It wasn’t really game related; I never used to say ‘are you going to win? Or who are you playing on?’ It was more just a general discussion and then Nick would usually finish the call off with ‘OK, I’ll talk to you after the game’. And then I’d say ‘I’ll talk to you after you win’.

“We spoke about it not long ago and said it’s amazing we’ve been able to keep up that tradition. I think it was perhaps a distraction for him, a moment where he didn’t have to think about the game.”
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After coaching Nick in his first game back at Sandy Bay in Hobart, Joe can’t believe his son’s career is nearly over.

On the eve of the chapter closing, Joe said his family is extremely grateful for the experience and the fact the No. 12 has played his entire career in red, white and black.

“It is hard to believe it’s over. But we as a family have been so fortunate that he’s played for so long,” Riewoldt said.

“Players often only get four or five years or six or seven or ten which is an outstanding number of years to play.

“To have 17 years of being able to watch your son, brother play, we’re extraordinarily fortunate. We’ve enjoyed it immensely.

“We’re very happy that he’s been a one club player, which is only too rare today. I wouldn’t have liked to have seen him join another club; I’m a St Kilda person and we’re a St Kilda family. So it’s been ideal; it’s been a great run.”
 
Few people have enjoyed a greater insight into Nick Riewoldt’s incredible resilience than the St Kilda medical team.

Riewoldt’s ability to push his body to the limit and overcome injuries is the stuff of legend.

The infamous knee, the shoulders, and of course the ‘catastrophic’ hamstring injury in 2010, have all been major plot points in a journey spanning 17 season and countless hours on the physio table.

While fans, teammates and coaches have long marveled at his miraculous recuperating powers, St Kilda Physio Andrew Wallis has seen it daily for close to 10 years.

Wallis joined St Kilda in 2007 and estimates he’s had the retiring great on his table upwards of 1,000 times over the years.

“During the season we’d have Nick on the plinth (physio table) at least three times a week, while it's also pretty regular during the pre-season,” Wallis said.

“Everyone knows about the knees, and will remember the hamstring, but over the years there has been also a host of more typical football injuries.”

“The mental resilience to endure, to overcome those injuries, and deal with the public scrutiny is something I will always associate with Nick.

“For someone who was restricted to modified pre-season programs and training once a week during the season, what he has been able to achieve is remarkable.

“He is a phenomenal athlete and phenomenal in the way he prepares.”
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While Wallis still shakes his head at how the 34-year-old endured the weekly visits to have his knee drained during 2012 and 2013 seasons, it’s the recovery from the ‘catastrophic’ hamstring injury that stands out the most.

“At the time, it was a rare injury that no one had operated on before. Coincidently, Josh Gibson (Hawthorn) suffered the same injury the next day and underwent the same surgery,” he said.

“To be able to get back that year and be a part of the finals campaign was an indication of how dedicated and diligent Nick was to his recovery.”

Wallis also smiles at the memory of a particular match in Adelaide pitted against All-Australian defender Daniel Talia.

“Nick tore what is commonly referred to as the ‘monkey muscle’ (smaller calf muscle) pretty early on and I think he actually told Talia he’d done it," Wallis recalled.

“He must have thought he was in for an easy day and started running off Nick at every opportunity.

“He then got a big of a shock when Nick returned to the field after some treatment a few minutes later like nothing had happened.

“It was soon back to chasing Nick up and down the wing.”

Along with Wallis, doctors Ian Stone and Tim Barbour have also been constants in Riewoldt’s career, as has his own personal chiropractor Azim Hosseini.

“Over the years you get to know the guys really well and we will all miss having Nick the person around as much as Nick the footballer,” Wallis said.
 

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St Kilda champion Nick Riewoldt says he found writing some chapters of his autobiography extremely tough to put into words, but therapeutic at the same time when recounting his late sister's tragic battle with aplastic anaemia.

The six-time Trevor Barker Award winner retired at the end of this season after 17 decorated seasons and 335 games in red, white and black.

Maddie Riewoldt’s Vision launched Maddie’s Match in 2015 and it has now featured two games between the Saints and Richmond, which have raised more than $300,000 towards finding a cure for bone marrow failure.

While Riewoldt admits it was difficult to relive some of Maddie's battle, the process also helped him remember some of the better times he enjoyed with his sister.

“It was really difficult (to write about). Writing the book was quite helpful, with respects to that though,” Riewoldt told Melbourne radio station 3AW this week.

“It was painful at times reliving a lot of what we went through, particularly the last seven months in intensive care, which were just so horrible. Driving into the hospital the morning Maddie passed away and knowing we were driving in to face that.

“Even just reflecting on as human beings how we are able to function through those periods; it’s quite incredible what human beings are able to do when faced with that sort of adversity.

“Reflecting on a lot of the good times has been a real positive to come out of it as well.

“Only once I sat down with Peter Hanlon, my ghostwriter, and he prised a lot of those emotions out of me, I was able to reflect on the great memories I have of my little sister.”

Riewoldt, 35, launched his book ‘The things that make us’ earlier this week and said he didn’t want it to be another run of the mill football memoir, preferring to provide a relatable insight into the moments in time that has formed the person he has become.

“When I was first approached about going down the path of writing a book I really wanted to avoid writing another cookie-cutter football book,” he said.

“I felt like that had been done a lot of times before and to be honest, my story wasn’t all that compelling; there were players who have had won more premierships, had more success on the field and maybe more interesting football careers.

“If I did do it, I wanted to do something that was relatable and that people found interesting. The way I was able to do that was to show some vulnerability but to also open up and talk about the rest of my life and some of the events, relationships and circumstances that have conspired to make me who I am.”
 
This is an edited extract from 'The Things That Make Us' by Nick Riewoldt with Peter Hanlon (Allen & Unwin, $39.99, onsale now).

I clutched my right leg around the shin, pulled my knee towards my chest and looked up at the big screen in search of the replay. There’d been a ‘pop’, perhaps even more of a ‘bang’, loud enough that a couple of Melbourne players nearby said they’d heard it too. It didn’t look, sound or feel good at all. I screamed: ‘Noooo! Nooooooo!’

I’d had grand designs on playing until who knows when, or at least the 2017 season and again the following year if all was well. I’d given myself the best chance to do that. I was playing good footy, and I was in really good shape. In the final pre-season game a fortnight earlier, against Sydney in Albury, my GPS reading was close to a career personal best: 16 kilometres covered in the game, with 2.1 kilometres of high-intensity running, or faster than 20 kilometres an hour. They’re big numbers, especially in a shortened game. I was 34 and starting my seventeenth season, and I’d never been better prepared.

Now it was round 1 and I was sitting on the Etihad Stadium turf, surrounded by teammates, opponents and 36,000 fans but feeling horribly alone. And all I could think was, ‘That’s it.’ Even before our doc Tim Barbour and physio Andrew Wallis got to me, in that short space of time, there was reflection. ‘I’ve been doing this for more than half my life,’ I thought, ‘and this is the moment, this is the end. It’s over.’ I thought I had hurt my right knee in a marking contest but could see from the replay that I’d hyper-extended as I went to push off after landing. I’ve got great relationships with ‘Barbs’and ‘Wal’ and go back a long way with them. When they crouched down next to me I said, ‘I think I’ve done my ACL.’ And I could tell from their faces they thought I’d done it too. I remember saying to Wal, ‘That’s my career, isn’t it?’ He didn’t really answer.

I disappeared into my own world. The things that went through my head were incredible. I thought about Bob Murphy, whom I’d become close to on an Ireland trip eighteen months earlier, and who cruelly missed the Western Bulldogs premiership after doing his knee early in 2016 not far from where I was sitting. I came to a fantastical acceptance: if this means I’m the sacrificial lamb and we’re going to win the flag, so be it. As thoughts came in a rush I wondered whether the club would give me another year. If they wouldn’t, I wondered if I could have LARS knee surgery and get back in 2017 and with luck play finals one last time.

The crowd got going when I was loaded onto the cart; I could hear and feel them cheering. I wondered if I should give them a thumbs-up to show that I was all right, but that seemed silly because I didn’t know whether I was. In reality I feared I was anything but. I thought about waving, in case it really was the end. Chris Judd had waved after he had done his knee in 2015, knowing it was the last time he would leave the ground as a player. I almost followed his lead, but in the end I just sat there. There’s no back on those little carts, and the bloke who was driving it hit the brakes as we got to the ramp going down into the rooms and almost tipped me off. I slid along the cart, and someone said later they saw me shit myself.

It’s funny the things that stay with you. At the door to the rooms, I climbed off and walked in. I heard later that people had seen that vision on Fox Footy and taken it as a good sign, but I knew walking meant nothing. Lenny Hayes played the week after doing his knee, then went down properly. Clay Smith from the Bulldogs went back on the ground after doing his for the second or third time. Walking doesn’t mean a thing. You can walk with a ruptured ACL. You just can’t play for a year. And when you’re 34, that’s forever.

I sat on the bed in the doctor’s room and they did the test. It’s called the Lachman test: you relax everything, and the doc grabs your thigh with one hand and your leg below the knee with the other and pulls it towards him. It’s obvious if there’s a solid end point, which means the ACL is lengthening and holding the knee in place. Doctor Ian Stone did the test, then he looked at me with a look of surprise. ‘There’s a solid end point.’ We all looked at each other, thinking the same thing. ‘Shit, I haven’t done it!’ They went on and checked my medial, lateral and PCL. If any of those is injured, you miss six to ten weeks, but an ACL is a year. I’d only missed a handful of games in the previous three years, and the season before I’d polled 19 Brownlow votes, the most I’d managed in my career. But the way my contract negotiations had gone over that time, the concern the club had over my body, I wouldn’t have been confident they’d have taken the same approach the Bulldogs took with Murph and backed me to come back in 2018. Thankfully, we didn’t have to find out.

I walked out of the doctor’s room, grabbed my phone and tried to call Cath. It didn’t even ring. Then I tried Alex, no answer. Mum and Dad, no answer. I didn’t want them to stress for any longer than they had to, just to say, ‘I haven’t done my ACL, it’s okay.’ They all appeared in the rooms before I could get anyone on the phone, and I could see James was really upset. He wasn’t crying, but he was rattled. He knew there was something wrong with Dad. Even a couple of days later, walking him around our neighbourhood, he was sitting in the stroller, saying, ‘Daddy fell over. Daddy’s knee. Daddy went on the little car.’ We went home, put the boys to bed, got some burgers delivered and sat on the couch. It was a strange feeling, having just looked my football mortality in the face.

Cath was funny— her sister Vivian was getting married in Houston three weeks later, and Cath was very glass-half-full about the prospect of my knee being shot. I don’t think I was even off the ground and she was online, looking up flights. Before I’d had the knee scanned there was apparently a buzz in her social circle back home, ‘Nick might be coming to the wedding now!’ In ‘sliding door’ moments I’ve wondered what would have happened if the Lachman test had gone the way we’d feared: That there had been no end point when the doc tugged my leg, and the ACL was ruptured. It would have made for a crazy few days of conversations about the future and big, big decisions. If the club had said they didn’t see a place for me in 2018, I might have had LARS surgery and tried to play again in 2017. Or I might have jumped on a plane and moved to Texas. Who knows. Again, thankfully, we didn’t have to find out.

When I was back on the couch, Murph got in touch and sent me two photos—one of me going off on the cart, and one of him walking off after he’d done his knee—to show how tough he is and how soft I am. I called him and we had a chuckle. I don’t think people really know what to say in those situations; it wasn’t until Sunday, when it was confirmed I was okay, that I started getting a lot of messages. I had gone on TV and said I felt like a bit of a goose when it turned out that it wasn’t an ACL. I would have felt like a bigger goose if I’d waved to the crowd on the way off. Imagine that: the grand farewell, waving to the fans, throwing my boots into the crowd, asking the driver to do a lap of honour . . . and it turns out my knee is pretty much fine.

The next morning I had a scan at 8 a.m. at Victoria House that confirmed there was no cartilage damage, no ligament damage and best of all no ACL damage. I’d split the capsule that surrounds the whole joint and stops the synovial fluid from leaking out. The capsule is quite thick, which is why I felt a pop. They put it at anywhere from two to six weeks. In the end I missed a week.
 
The St Kilda Football Club has opted to temporarily retire the number 12, worn by retired champion Nick Riewoldt, for at least the 2018 season.

After seeing Riewoldt through 336 games and twelve years as captain, Saints CEO Matt Finnis said it would be the first time in more than 25 years the number 12 would not be in the St Kilda line-up.

“We believe, and I know it's a view shared by many St Kilda supporters, that temporarily retiring the number 12 is the right call and honours the legacy Nick has created over past seventeen years,” Finnis said.

“We know that it will be strange for many to see a Saints team without it, but I have no doubt that the day will come where we see the number 12 being proudly represented in the red, white and black again.”


Can’t wait for 2018 season.
 

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CHAMPION St Kilda forward Nick Riewoldt has been awarded the 2017 AFL Players' Association Madden Medal.

The prize goes to a retiring player who had an outstanding career and has set himself up well off-field in terms of personal development and growth, as well as displaying community spirit.

Riewoldt lined up in 336 matches after being drafted with the first selection in 2000 and captained the club on 220 occasions, which ranks third all-time.

As well as enjoying a career that yielded 718 goals and six Trevor Barker Awards as St Kilda's club champion, Riewoldt has completed tertiary study including a Bachelor of Exercise Science and Business (Sport Management).

He is a co-founder and chairperson of Maddie Riewoldt's Vision, which raises money to fund treatments and cures of bone marrow failure syndromes, after his younger sister died in 2015 from a rare blood disease called aplastic anaemia.

"To receive any award which is voted on and overseen by your peers is a great honour, and to win one which also bears the Madden name is especially significant. Both Simon and Justin Madden achieved incredibly high standards in both their football and professional careers and have served as great motivation for hundreds of our alumni," Riewoldt said in a statement.

"I always believed that my actions on the field offered an insight into who I was as a person, and while incredibly important to me, I didn't want to be defined by them. Rather, I wanted to utilise the skills that football helped me develop on a platform that transcended sport."

Other nominees were Riewoldt's former teammate Leigh Montagna, Matthew Boyd, Tom Lonergan, Sam Mitchell, Robert Murphy, Drew Petrie, Matt Priddis, Andrew Swallow and Jobe Watson.

"That's what really makes it stand out. You look at the other guys that are nominated, guys that I've played a lot of footy with and against and developed great respect for. Not just on the field, but also off the field, which I hope the medal encapsulates. It's very humbling," Riewoldt said.

Voting is done by the AFLPA board and past winners, a group that includes champions Matthew Pavlich, Chris Judd and Glenn Archer.

"Nick has had an extraordinary career and will go down in history as one of the great legends of this game. His leadership, courage and class on the field has been mirrored in the way he conducts himself off the field," Simon Madden said.


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http://usafl.com/printpdf/37598

A USAFL team tried to gain the rights to let Nick Riewoldt play for them. They put in an exemption request that is absolutely hilarious and you could see right through it. Of course the USAFL knew who Nick was and denied the request. This link will lead you to the request or you can read it right here.

Nick has been a member of the Roos for over an hour, and continues to show unwavering support of the GGAFL. Since joining the club, Nick has been unable to make many matches in the Bay Area due to other commitments, mainly those centered around bettering the lives of less fortunate, including some work which many consider that of a saint. Nick was definitely not playing footy anywhere, and certainly not in Australia. Not at all. We look forward to hearing that Nick may play with the Golden Gate Roos in Austin this weekend.
 

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