Why Willie Rioli Snr kept his son’s AFL dream alive and now it’s paying off at West Coast
A FEW times while Willie Rioli was living in Adelaide he called his dad and said he was ready to pack up and come home.
A FEW times while Willie Rioli was living in Adelaide he called his dad and said he was ready to pack up and come home.
Sick of the cold, missing his family and believing his AFL dream was over, Rioli thought he would move back to the Tiwi Islands.
Willie Snr would get the phone calls while he was at work and he could empathise with how his son was feeling but couldn’t let it happen.
“Knowing how much talent he had, I just didn’t want to see that go to waste,” Willie Snr said this week.
“I knew it would be his best opportunity to stick it out with Glenelg and they were fantastic, I can’t put into words what they did to help him get to where he wanted to go, and I get emotional about things like that.
“Sending him to Melbourne for high school was the start of it when he was 15 and he was homesick but he’s matured and grown up as a person every year.”
His commitment to staying in Adelaide went beyond just in-season and eventually led him to being drafted.
“He went home a few times in his first year but it got to a point where we said ‘well mate, really to get all the gains that you need you can’t go home in November and come back in February’,” Glenelg football manager Paul Sandercock said.
“You need to hang around and do a full pre-season, he was only home for the break the players had and was certainly back doing all the work like everyone else.”
So Lokan and Sandercock both smiled to themselves when they watched highlights of Rioli’s game-winning performance for West Coast last weekend.
Late in the final quarter against GWS, the 23-year-old set up a goal to Andrew Gaff with a desperate but very deliberate tap into space then kicked the sealer himself with a set shot from 40m.
He always had the talent to make it which is no surprise given Hawthorn’s Cyril is a first cousin and Richmond’s Daniel a second.
“He’d be in the best half-a-dozen kicks that I’ve seen in my time in footy - both feet,” Lokan said.
“I think Nathan Buckley was the best but Willie is not far behind him.”
Willie Snr played over 200 games and in four premierships with St Mary’s in the NTFL while his mother Georgina’s nephew is former Geelong and Crows livewire Ronnie Burns.
“I think I’ve got him covered,” said Willie Snr with a laugh when asked about father/son comparisons.
“In skill but not in terms of now much penetration he gets with his kick, he’s a very talented kid.
“They do say they see some smiliarities between us, but he’s got more go in him than I did.”
One of the earliest challenges for Rioli in Adelaide was living independently away from school and home.
When he arrived at Glenelg in late 2014 he initially slept on his coach’s couch before his partner Lucy moved down from the Tiwi Islands as well.
“The whole process of renting, cooking, cleaning (was a learning curve) and his partner Lucy was a fantastic support for him,” Lokan said.
“I couldn’t speak more highly of the way those two dealt with moving to Adelaide, changing their lives around.”
Rioli was also very shy but slowly came out of his shell working at the club on an AFL traineeship.
“He was the quietest kid,” Sandercock said.
“Lucy was the same, they didn’t come out of the house much and he surrounded himself with family and friends he knew he had in Adelaide.
“But he never missed a beat with training and he was only quiet until his draft year when he started showing some really good form on the field and felt comfortable.”
But the biggest challenge he overcame was his fitness.
“When Willie came down he could barely run two laps of the oval, his conditioning was really poor,” Lokan said.
“It took him a good couple of months to get some condition behind him and get into training.
“He stuck at it and continued to train hard and he got some stability in Adelaide.”
At the end of 2015 Rioli knuckled down, did boxing, extra running sessions and changed his diet and dropped a staggering 16kg.
“To lose that amount of weight and still play good footy was huge. Normally if you do that you might drop away a bit on your productivity but he was still able to train hard and play some good football especially in that last year,” Lokan said.
After dropping the weight he never looked back, starred at league level with Glenelg and played state footy for SA which put him on the map of AFL recruiters.
Lokan had such an influence on Rioli that just before the draft he was invited to the Tiwi Islands to meet Rioli’s family, experience the culture and go fishing.
“And just have a look around and sit on the beach,” Willie Snr said.
“It gives them an understanding of how we live and the closeness of family which they really appreciate.”
Lokan caught his first Barramundi on the trip and said it was an eye opener.
“It was a fantastic opportunity to see how the people on the Tiwi Islands live,” he said.
“The Tiwis played Southern Districts when we were up there and the ferry was late so the boys came running onto the oval 10 minutes late, they tend to run on Tiwi time which in a way is good.”
A month later and Rioli’s time at Glenelg was up when West Coast drafted him with Pick No.52.
But his first season in the AFL system was ruined by consecutive hamstring injuries - the first requiring surgery.
“He had his challenges dealing with that,” West Coast forwardline coach Jamie Graham said.
“He loves the game and not being able to play he put on some weight.
“But at the end of the year he set himself some goals and wanted to come back in good shape which he did.”
Rioli debuted in Round 2 this year and has played every game since for 13 goals.
“He doesn’t get a lot of the ball but he makes it count,” Graham said.
“If he’s not kicking goals he’s putting pressure on and some of the stuff he does off the ball - the team things - you don’t see on TV but he’s doing them.”
Graham understands Rioli the footballer but he now understands the person as well after he and West Coast senior coach Adam Simpson made the same trip as Lokan and went to the Tiwi Islands last year.
“It was really great for us to connect with Willie and his family,” Graham said.
“To understand where he is from, their values and beliefs and the sacrifices some of the boys from there have made so they can have a crack at the AFL system.
“It makes you realise how different life in the big smoke is.
“And one thing we realised is how much they love their footy. So it’s really important to protect the love of the game because people like Willie need to enjoy it.”