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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Training for DRAFT PICKS!!!!
- Thread starter caesar
- Start date
The bloke he fought to win the WA title was a weight division above and the commonwealth games champ. Alex Leatherday. A real gentleman. Maurice opened his eye right up in the first. Alex said Maurices speed was astonishing.
Cheers easy.
Gee I loved Maurice, he's the best indigenous player I've seen, I might have the rose coloured glasses on.
He'd run rings around them now if he played.
Maurice Rioli
A football pioneer for his family, for Tiwi islanders and for many Aboriginal players in general, the late, great Maurice Rioli was a man who loved the big stage.The beautifully skilled, left-footed centreman was voted best-afield in three successive Grand Finals – the 1980 and 1981 WAFL deciders with South Fremantle and the 1982 VFL play-off with Richmond – the last two in losing teams.
'Mr Magic' also won best and fairests in his first two seasons at Tigerland (1982-83) and was runner-up in the 1983 Brownlow Medal.
No wonder Essendon's then dual reigning premiership coach Sheedy was so keen to snare Rioli
when he considered a change of clubs at the end of 1985.
Sheedy: "For all his brilliance, Maurice was tough, and a great tackler. And he was a lovely person."
Although he initially found the training tough at Richmond, Rioli was driven to succeed, later saying: "I was wanting to prove to myself and others that I was good enough to play at that level."
Maurice Rioli weaves his magic against Collingwood in 1985. Picture: AFL Photos
When Rioli was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame last year, former Richmond teammate Dale Weightman recalled a silent assassin.
"He didn't talk much – he let his footy do the talking – and he was poetry in motion," Weightman told the AFL Record.
"Pure class, silky-smooth, a great ball-handler, a great dodger and weaver, and a beautiful left-foot kick.
"He always seemed to have time and he never lost his feet – he had unbelievable balance."
Weightman said Rioli was "ahead of his time" as a tackler, revealing he would advise teammates: "Hey brother, you gotta draw from the hips like a gunfighter."
Rioli did his share of fighting too – in retaliation for regular racial slurs – and that's where his status as an amateur boxing champion came to the fore.
Weightman: "He'd just give a little one-two and the bloke learned his lesson."
Some years earlier, Rioli also delivered a boxing lesson to the much bigger and much louder Mark 'Jacko' Jackson at South Fremantle training.
Rioli later became a champion for his people, as a longtime Labor member of the Northern Territory parliament and later in community services on the Tiwi Islands.
All the while, he continued to mentor and inspire young footballers, among them members of his extended family, including Essendon great Michael Long and nephew Cyril Rioli – who, remarkably, also won Norm Smith Medals – and grand-nephew Daniel Rioli, who proudly wears Maurice's old No. 17.
Long last year described Rioli as a "Rolls-Royce" who, from a football perspective, helped "put NT on the map".
Rioli's sudden death at just 53 on Christmas Day, 2010, provoked an enormous outpouring of grief, and he received a state funeral in Darwin.
Aboriginal football's first family
How the Riolis made a family name synonymous with exciting footy
www.afl.com.au
Hopefully some new blood as well we already know what Egg provides but may need to add in experience if Stack gonski
Poor stacky has got a complex after your last post
Yeah i reckon stackman gets the all clear to run out after a spotter confirms Caesar walking back over Punt Road.
Who's the kid kicking the ball??
Who's next to Ross??
Lambert is the best. Training with the kids
All about senior players stepping up to help with coaching and development in 2021
We will be the team that leads by this example with the leaders at the club and the coaches that have departed
Cocthin Riewoldt Grimes Astbury Martin Lynch Houli Vlastuin Caddy Prestia Edwards Nankervis Lambert
Thats a great group of leadership and knowledge that the younger players will look upto.
The great teams; the ones that establish dynasties with multiple Premierships, have groups like that on their lists.
Isn't that what Port have done with Goldsack - pay him as a rookie but in reality he is another assistant coach?
looks like he adds a lot off the field. Hoping the hip is all good now and he can get back to that hard running in the longer quarters again. Legend.
