SACKED podcast: Trent Croad‘s hope for Rioli, Hawks to be reconciled

Trent Croad has recently come back into the fold at Hawthorn, and he told this week’s SACKED podcast of his belief that it would be good for premiership teammate, Cyril Rioli, too.

Hawthorn premiership star Trent Croad has urged Cyril Rioli to return to the fold after making his own journey of reconnection with the club again in recent months.

And Croad told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast critics who believe Alastair Clarkson cannot create the same premiership magic at a new club are “full of it” given his unique coaching gifts.

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Croad was traded by Hawthorn in one of the most jaw-dropping decisions of the century but returned to play in the 2008 premiership before retiring with a foot injury.

While he has had no specific beef with Hawthorn it has only been this year as the club makes a concerted attempt to reconnect with past players that he has started attending games again.

Croad’s middle daughter Sierra, 12, has aspirations to play with Hawthorn after winning a junior Queensland AFLW player of the year award and he would love for her to follow in his footsteps.

Hawthorn is hoping to bring Cyril Rioli back into the fold.

Like Croad, Rioli is a premiership hero at the Hawks.

The Hawks are making attempts to lure Cyril Rioli back to the club and Croad said he hoped the four-time premiership star would realise the close connection he still has with his teammates.

“I hope so. I love Cyril. I was very close to Jeff (Kennett), he was my neighbour across the road. How do I say it? I really hope they do mend it. Because they‘re both two great people. And all I can say to Cyril is, ‘Mate we miss you’, and all I can say is that I have just started doing a lot of things at the club and coming back and when you have that in your life, it would be really good for him because the people love him, they really do,” Croad said.

“I have only just started going to the footy again and I have really loved it. They have had me the last few weeks and I have loved it. I was at the president’s lunch then (partner) Kate got invited to the Carlton (Hawthorn) game and it’s been really great to see the (Hawthorn) people and the boys again. They have got a really big aspect of bringing the players back to the club.”

Croad has gone through his own life challenges like many past players but is a manager at the Fleming Group which helps install landscapes and plant trees across large estates and projects.

“I am really, really happy. Sierra just got the Queensland AFLW player in Queensland so she is coming through and Hawthorn have announced a women’s team. She is 12 and she’s tall so I would be absolutely stoked (if she played for the Hawks). Not to put any pressure on her but she’s 5 foot 10 at 12 and she’s quick and plays ruck and centre half back.”

Clarkson did not win a final in his last six years at the Hawks after four flags from 2008-2015 but Croad says the entire Clarkson package is exceptional.

“Clarko is right up there with one of the biggest influences of my life. The stuff he came up with, the 4-3-2 (Clarko’s Cluster) behind the ball which revolutionised defence, no one knew what to do (against it). He’s off the charts. He has got it. He has got the power to do it and the people to do it and I would love to see him back out there. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Tassie team.”

Croad’s message to those who doubt Clarkson is blunt: “You are full of it. Get stuffed.”

The kick that sealed footy’s biggest trade shock

Trent Croad has lifted the lid on the dramatic toll of the bombshell trade that sent the Hawthorn favourite to Fremantle, revealing his mother took part in the protest rallies that tried to keep him at Glenferrie Oval.

Croad was traded against his will only weeks after his long late shot against Essendon in the 2001 preliminary final faded to hit the post in a nail-biting affair.

Croad told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast he was “shattered” by the trade that saw Hawthorn secretly plotting to ship him to secure the No. 1 pick from Fremantle.

He said the Hawks rejected a strong push from Essendon’s Kevin Sheedy to secure him, and revealed even as the club traded him they indicated they would try to get him back in coming years.

Trent Croad at Hawks training.

Trent Croad on crutches at the end of the 2008 Grand Final.

A shattered Nathan Thompson and Trent Croad in the rooms after their 2001 preliminary final loss.

Croad returned to the Hawks after two tough years of scrutiny at Fremantle and played an iconic role in the 2008 Grand Final victory, breaking his foot but bumping Geelong’s Joel Selwood in what would be his last act in footy.

The club’s 2001 coach Peter Schwab told Sacked this year the club knew it needed to secure one of the top three picks (Luke Hodge, Luke Ball, Chris Judd) but admitted it butchered the execution with Croad only finding out on the first day of the annual trade talks.

“I was shattered,” Croad told Sacked on Friday.

“I was a bit naive. I wasn’t really sure what was going on. Trading wasn’t huge. Players ask to be traded now but back then loyalty was really strong and we had just come out of a prelim and there was this tubby bloke from Colac (Hodge) that they are looking at.

“They wouldn’t trade for anyone else. Then I find myself with my management group, Paul Connors and Essendon had rung and I find myself dealing with Kevin Sheedy. I had to go and meet him at the Hilton Hotel.

“He had the player board there and he said ‘Lloyd, Lucas, Solomon, Croad’, he wanted to do it. Hawthorn went, ‘Nup, we are not doing it’. They would not deal with Essendon., I think the whole rivalry was too much and they wouldn’t do it.”

President Ian Dicker was filthy with the club’s decision and called it “un-Hawthorn-like” with a petition started to keep Croad and a noisy Glenferrie Oval protest initiated to stop the trade.

“I was sitting at home watching the protests on TV. I loved the Hawthorn fans,” says Croad of that emotional time.

“Me and Johnny (Hay) had visited all the schools around being the marketing guys so people grew up with us over that period. My mum was in the protest. She heard about it, and it got circulated that it was going on. She hid around the bushes, she obviously didn’t want me to go away. I think for its time this was very new. We had never seen anything like it. They brought in (club great) David Parkin to facilitate it, he had to sit in the crowd at Glenferrie with all the people.

Trent Croad’s trade to the Dockers remains one of the biggest moves in AFL history.

Trent Croad played 38 games for the Dockers before being traded back to Hawthorn.

“I had a really emotional meeting with (footy boss) John Hook and (assistant) Chris Connolly and I was rapt he was going to Fremantle to coach them. John kissed me on the cheek and he almost cried. He is a beautiful man. He used to give me a meal a week at his place in Canterbury. He was huge with the young kids so I don’t think he was sure about it at all. But in the end it happened.”

Remarkably, Croad would go under the knife for surgery just before the trade was brokered.

“I went in for a wrist operation. I went under the anaesthetic as a Hawk and I woke up a Docker when the trade had been done. They gave me a Fremantle jumper. I agreed to a three or four year deal. I can’t say who told me but I sort of knew that I was coming back after two years,” he said.

Trent Croad has revealed the impact being traded to Fremantle had on him.

Asked if the club would have been able to trade him had his long bomb flown straight to win the preliminary final, Croad believes he would have stayed.

“I think so. It would have been harder for them to trade me. But in order to get Hodgey there, that’s all they could deal with. They would not do any other trades with anyone else.”

Croad was traded for picks 1 (Hodge), 20 (Daniel Elstone) and 36 (Sam Mitchell) with Luke McPharlin joining him in the heading west, with the Hawks favourite traded back two years later for pick 10 (Ryley Dunn).

“I was 21, it seemed like a good idea in Perth. With all the hysteria that went on with it, Fremantle and (Dockers CEO) Cam Schwab came up and saw me. We saw Chris Tarrant do the same thing (go to Fremantle and come back). It became appealing for me to just get out for a bit. Out of Melbourne for a bit, especially coming off the prelim and the poster. I was just a bit numb, coming off the op and all, Then it became exciting for me, I sold the house and headed up over there. (But) always in the back of my mind I felt like I was coming back to Hawthorn. There might have been a bit of strategy behind this one. With Hodgey and I to be so close, and to be traded for that boy, the synergy we created and friendships was a wonderful thing.”