Adelaide Crows star Riley Thilthorpe opens up on his rise towards becoming one of the AFL’s best key forwards
Riley Thilthorpe’s rise didn’t happen overnight. He chats to Simeon Thomas-Wilson about his journey towards becoming one of the AFL’s best key forwards.
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When Adelaide was doing its due diligence on Riley Thilthorpe before the 2020 draft the Crows asked him what would he do if they didn’t take with the No. 1 pick?
The answer from the then West Adelaide teenager was emphatic; “I’ll prove everyone wrong, they should have got me (at) one”, Crows senior coach Matthew Nicks relayed.
And what if they did take him at No. 1?
“Well, I’ll prove them right”.
More than four years from this Thilthorpe - taken at pick No. 2 after the Crows bidded on Jamarra Ugle-Hagan to make the Western Bulldogs match and pay up - is on his way to becoming one of the best key forwards in the competition.
It isn’t Ugle-Hagan - whose footy future is unclear as he deals with personal issues - who Thilthorpe is now duelling for the title of the next dominant key forward of the league for, rather his Bulldogs teammate Sam Darcy.
But it is the same mentality for the 22-year-old.
“Obviously the draft was a while ago but I want to be the best player I can be and get the most out of myself that I possibly can,” he told The Advertiser.
“That’s my goal and I want no regrets when I finish my career, so I’ll just continue to keep trying to get the most out of myself.”
There has been plenty of excitement around the two young guns, Thilthorpe is a year older than Darcy.
But this year, it has gone to another level.
Both sit in the top 10 of the Coleman Medal race, Thilthorpe equal fifth on 15 goals while Darcy is equal seventh a goal behind.
Thilthorpe at 201cm is the hulking man mountain in the Crows’ ‘three-headed monster’ of a forward line, Darcy at 208cm has had Collingwood legend Scott Pendlebury claim he will become “something that game has never seen” with his long reach, good leap and athleticism when the ball hits the ground.
It shapes as a fascinating duel for years to come, and Thilthorpe said while he is trying to not pay attention to the increased attention - especially from across the border - he knows it will be there if he is to become the player he wants to be.
“I learnt pretty early that it is a bit of a rollercoaster and if you pay attention to that stuff it is only going to hurt you I reckon,” he said.
“I kicked five in my first game (against Hawthorn in 2021) and everyone was happy and then I was a bit quiet for a couple of weeks and I learnt that it is a real rollercoaster and it comes and goes.
“I try not to spend too much time on it but I know it is there, I want to be a great player and it comes with it.
“So I am not pushing it away but I am just trying to listen to the people that I trust.
“He (Darcy) is obviously a freak. When he is on I will watch but I don’t watch too much footy outside of what I have to, to be honest.
“But he is a very good player and will be one for a very long time.”
NOT AN OVERNIGHT TRANSFORMATION
Part of the fascination now with Thilthorpe outside of South Australia is largely down to his incredible physical transformation.
After suffering a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee in the final moments of the last pre-season game last year, Thilthorpe spent four-months on the sidelines.
When he returned, the tall and relatively skinny kid who could move like the wind despite his height was now a bearded man-mountain.
He was 99/100kg when he first came to the Crows, he now stands at 111kg.
He bench pressed 90kg, at his peak in rehab he did 150kg for two.
For some footy fans it might have seemed like an overnight transformation.
Not for Thilthorpe.
“What I think goes unnoticed is that I’ve been working my arse off for four or five years and it has finally come to fruition,” he said.
“It is not like it was a quick fix or anything, the pre-season before I did it I was in the best shape of my life and I felt really good and doing my knee gave me time to really focus on it.
“But it had been a long process of building my body up.
“I was off legs for about 10 to 12 weeks so it was all upper body, I didn’t do any lowers until like week eight.
“So there was literally two months of upper body four to five times a week, it is pretty hard to not put on some muscle if you are doing that much.”
Fuelling this was “a lot of tuna and rice, weetbix for breakfast” although it was just the lazy eight a morning for Thilthorpe rather than the 13 he used to consume.
“It was pretty plain and boring to be honest so I tried to keep it pretty simple and pretty clean and get my carbs in,” he said.
“My first couple of years I was (doing 13) and I was getting a few weird looks on game day when I was at the hotel eating that many.”
I GAVE MYSELF A FEW DAYS TO FEEL A BIT SH*T
Thilthorpe’s knee injury against West Coast was deflating for the Crows.
Throughout pre-season the Crows spoke about embracing the expectations now placed upon them after coming close to breaking their finals drought in 2023.
They also spoke about how Thilthorpe was ready to have a breakout year.
So the seemingly innocuous injury in the final minutes against the Eagles was a massive blow for both.
But while initially Thilthorpe let himself wallow, he quickly turned his attention to making the best out of the situation.
“I thought I was going to be fine as well,” he said.
“It wasn’t until I got the scan back that I was told I was going to be out for so long.
“It was a tough time but I had a lot of great people around me and a lot of great support, so I tried to make a positive out of it.
“I gave myself a little bit of time to feel sorry for myself because I had done so much work and it was in the last game of pre-season, the last quarter and the last five minutes.
“So I gave myself a few days to let myself feel a bit sh*t and then it changed to what can I do to change this to work in my favour and that’s what I did just the shift of mindset helped me and the boys are so good as well on that.
“I’m only here for a short time, the career isn’t going to last forever so I am trying to get the most out of myself.
“I just want to look back and have no regrets.”
IT IS SO MUCH FUN
The defence might need some tightening up.
But the Crows might have the best tall forward line up in the league.
Along with Thilthorpe, equal fifth in the Coleman, there’s Darcy Fogarty in third with 16 goals, while veteran Taylor Walker is equal 10th with 12.
While other teams are going smaller and smaller in their forward lines, the Crows are rolling with three talls as well as the 197cm Dan Curtin flicking between attack and the wing.
It’s a fine balance given that being too tall could allow opponents to almost walk the ball out of defence or mean there is little else when the ball hits the ground.
But Thilthorpe is confident the Crows can make this work.
“It is so much fun playing with them, they are such unbelievable players and a couple of Tex’s goals the other night (against Geelong) just blew my mind,” he said.
“I don’t know how he is still doing it at his age.
“It just makes it so much easier having those two, different people will kick goals every week but we know what we bring and how to bring the best out of each other.
“The beauty of who we have in there, both Fog and Tex are really good ground ball players, Dan as well so I don’t think we lose a lot from that aspect and then we can stretch defences.
“It is pretty tough to match up on all three of us, Fog especially seems to get the third tall and he is a great forward and it is a tough matchup for any team.”
After a red-hot start to the year with three straight wins the Crows have cooled off with Nicks’ side dropping their last two.
On Saturday they take on the impressive GWS outfit at Adelaide Oval, with the Crows looking to finally convert matching it with a top side into a win.
“It is that consistency, we know we can do it and match it with the best sides but it is now about turning it into wins,” Thilthorpe said.
Originally published as Adelaide Crows star Riley Thilthorpe opens up on his rise towards becoming one of the AFL’s best key forwards
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