Candid chat: Those who know Mark Ricciuto best reveal what’s driving the Crows legend-turned-board member
Often chastised for walking the fine line between being the Crows’ football director and a breakfast radio host, Adelaide great Mark Ricciuto and those close to him reveal what truly motivates the outspoken former star.
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The sun was slowly setting behind the Western Stand of Adelaide Oval last Tuesday evening, as the Crows were doing battle against Hawthorn.
The night-time chill was starting to kick in, but former Crows club champion turned Fox Footy commentator Mark Ricciuto didn’t seem to notice.
Instead, all he could sense as he sat boundary-side calling the game was the rising belief that his much-loved club was edging ever closer to its first AFL victory in more than 12 months.
Deep in the fourth quarter the Crows had their noses in front, when small forward Lachlan Murphy launched a huge left foot kick toward goal.
In this moment, Ricciuto, along with the Crows supporters behind him in the stands and the coaches sitting in the box, held their collective breath.
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When the footy pierced the big sticks, rookie coach Matthew Nicks rose from his seat and screamed “C’mon!”, as the crowd erupted in elation.
This goal was cause for jubilation: having stared down the barrel of becoming the first team since Fitzroy in 1964 to go winless for an entire season, the Crows were about to claim a memorable victory in 2020.
At this time, Ricciuto probably allowed himself a quiet fist-pump, but he told his fellow commentators: “Pretty calm down here”.
Ricciuto – as he so often finds himself – was two parts last Tuesday night: One part footy commentator. One part devoted Crows man, and the club’s most high-profile board member.
And he’s more than accustomed compartmentalising those two parts of himself.
In fact, the 45-year-old has carved a path between club man and media personality like many others have done, most notably Collingwood president/commentator Eddie McGuire.
“I’ve actually always been really comfortable with calling the games, I don’t get caught up in the barracking,” he explains.
“I’ve always been able to differentiate that part of it, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little bit nervous early in the last quarter on Tuesday night.”
There is the very public face to the one they call “Roo”: the 1998 premiership winner, eight-time All-Australian, tough Adelaide captain (2001-07) who played 312 games, AFL Hall of Fame inductee. He remains the only Crows player in the club’s history to win a Brownlow Medal.
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His public face has only grown since he retired in 2007 as he forged a successful media career through Fox Footy commentary and Triple M breakfast radio.
Not to mention his part-ownership of popular Norwood pub The Alma.
In 2014, he joined the board of the Adelaide Football Club and is currently the club’s football director.
But then there is his private side: the hands-on dad of six who not only coaches his son Joe’s under-11s football team in the spare time he can scrounge, but is trying his hand at junior basketball coaching because no other parent put their hand up to do it.
He loves waterskiing on the River Murray near where he grew up, and crabbing in the shallows at Port Augusta.
He enjoys cooking and his signature dish is a family recipe passed down by his Nonno, where he throws whatever vegetables are in the fridge on the barbecue and pours a tin of tomatoes over the top.
For wife Sarah and their kids, he’s just Mark. Dad.
“He’s very family orientated, he loves his friends, he’d do anything for anyone and he’s always been like that and I think even Port supporters respect him because of that,” Sarah says.
The couple met in 1995 when Ricciuto visited the Just Jeans store where Sarah worked for a Crows promotional visit and they struck up a friendship that lasted years before they fell in love.
They married in 2008 and have children Sophie 13, Nick 12, Joe 10, Rosie 8, Rocco 6 and Tom 4.
It’s a busy life, exacerbated by the 4.15am starts that are mandatory for breakfast radio, and last weekend alone the Ricciutos juggled getting their children to 10 different sporting matches and training sessions, before hosting a large Father’s Day lunch for their extended family at their home on Sunday.
SPEAKING HIS MIND
But the path that “Roo” walks between media man and club man isn’t one without controversy.
This year, he’s weathered his fair share of them.
“I do 15 hours on air with Triple M brekky, probably do another three to six hours on Fox Footy or Triple M footy, so I’m on air for 20 hours a week and I guess maybe I’d like to take back 30 seconds or a minute over the past year where things haven’t quite come out the right way, and they create headlines, but I think 99.5 per cent of the time it comes across right for the right reasons,” Ricciuto says.
What he’s alluding to is possibly his biggest controversy this year, which was sparked when he detailed on air in June the reasons behind eight prominent players exiting the club, including Patrick Dangerfield, Eddie Betts and Josh Jenkins.
The comments caused a huge stir, with the likes of Port great Warren Tredrea and footy journalist Damian Barrett calling on the Crows to sack their football director.
“Only he can reveal why he felt compelled to orbit the Crows back into the AFL headlines with inappropriate comments about other clubs’ player salaries as a current Crows director. It has only damaged his club further,” Tredrea said.
Ricciuto’s player comments came during his Triple M breakfast radio show Roo and Ditts, which he hosts with former world No. 1 squash player Chris Dittmar.
Dittmar says their on-air partnership has flourished since they were brought together in 2011.
“We share the same interests, we love footy and punting and drinking,” Dittmar says.
But there was much about the champion footballer that surprised him, including how firm Ricciuto was in his convictions.
Dittmar explains: “I remember our first day together, we were doing a footy show and I said off-air: ‘I’ll say this and why don’t you say that and then we can debate it’. And Roo looked at me and said: ‘Why would I say that?’.
“I said: ‘Because it’s good radio’. He said: ‘You want me to go to air with something I don’t believe in?’
“It really stopped me in my tracks. I thought: ‘Sh*t, he’s right’.”
HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE
Ten years on and Ricciuto continues to stick by his convictions and will only say on air what he either truly believes, or what he has thoroughly researched.
At times, it must make him feel as if he’s stuck between a rock and hard place: juggling his radio commitments, with his intricate knowledge from the inner sanctum of the Adelaide Football Club.
Dittmar says Roo walks the thin line well, but admits it can be tough, and he often takes criticism to heart, including the barrage following those infamous player contracts remarks.
“He was trying to say to Crows supporters and members: ‘Look, we made tough decisions because of this, this and this’,” Dittmar explains.
“He then got in trouble for it … that troubled him because he had good intentions and he was trying to do the right thing and I only know about this because off-air we talked about it for hours.
“Believe it or not, he does now think he probably got it wrong. He’s man enough to say: ‘Next time I’ll do it differently’, but he genuinely doesn’t ever set out to hurt anyone or be nasty.
“He’s big and tough but he hasn’t got a nasty bone in his body.”
The next controversy arose a fortnight ago when Ricciuto talked about Port Adelaide’s key forward Charlie Dixon, and there being a long-term offer from a rival club on the table for him.
Social media exploded: “What? A football director of one club can’t talk about trades affecting another!”, footy commentators across the country cried.
Port’s Kane Cornes said on Nine’s Footy Classified: “I think it’s strange for a rival club director to be pedalling rumours … but for the club that he’s involved in to be the worst club in maybe 50 years in the AFL, I would have thought they’d have enough concerns of their own.”
The thing is that Roo was right, there were absolutely other offers for Dixon, it’s just he wasn’t interested in them and last week Dixon signed a three-year contract extension with the Power.
For Sarah, all the public criticisms do bother her.
“It’s really hard and the last few years have been really tough with the Crows for lots of reasons, all the stuff that’s been said,” she says.
“But Mark, he just loves it, he is so passionate about it … I just try not to read too much, or listen to too much, so that it doesn’t bother me.
“I would never ask him to give it away because he just loves it and I understand why he wants to do it … he just loves the club and wants it to be successful again.
“There have been lots of sleepless nights the last couple of years, and lots of tough decisions that have had to be made.”
BUSINESS VENTURES
One of the big influences in Ricciuto’s post-football life is prominent hotelier Peter Hurley, whom he met through a childhood friend from Waikerie.
“No doubt back in those days (Roo’s friends) would tell him what a hard-arse I was, which probably appealed to Mark, so we became friends, and what I didn’t realise as the friendship grew was that his real post-football aspiration was the hospitality industry,” Hurley says.
“He would frequently call me and say: ‘Pete, I heard such-and-such hotel’s on the market, should we buy that?’.”
It took some time before the duo – along with former Crow Simon Goodwin – found the right venture, and in 2000 they purchased The Alma Hotel nestled on the eastern edge of Adelaide’s CBD.
Ricciuto and Goodwin were able to leverage their footy profiles and mix it with Hurley’s extensive expertise to turn the pub into an Adelaide institution (Goodwin has since sold out and Crows stars Taylor Walker and Rory Sloane are co-owners).
It’s been an extremely successful partnership – and one that has expanded into further hotel ventures through the Port Lincoln Hotel and the Hackney Hotel, which is now being redeveloped into luxury apartments, as well as housing subdivisions.
Hurley says Ricciuto’s natural instincts are what has made him suited to the business world.
“What a lot of people wouldn’t realise about Mark is that he was good footballer because he’s got an incredible capacity to focus and concentrate,” Hurley says.
“He is a Brownlow Medallist footballer, but he’s a ‘Brownlow Medallist’ thinker as well, he’s got a very elite mind. Roo is lightning fast with numbers and arithmetic calculations. “Percentages, ratios, relativities all of those things he’s super-fast and that in turn gives him the capacity to be a very successful businessman.”
Ricciuto explains: “I only had two subjects at school I was good at: PE and maths. I used to get called ‘the calculator’ when I was about five or six.
“We used to play this game at Ramco Primary School, which is a very small primary school (in the Riverland), there were 130 kids at the time and you used to have to stand back-to-back and the teacher would read out a times table – and this is very 1980s – but you had to turn around and shoot the person in the back when you knew the answer.
“You wouldn’t get away with that anymore, but I was pretty good at that game.”
Numbers aside, Hurely says, what’s aided Ricciuto’s success is the fact that he’s simply an “incredibly likeable guy” and he tells the story of catching up with former World Series-winning New York Yankee baseballer Pat Kelly, who’s spent a lot of time living in Adelaide, when Kelly brought Roo into the conversation.
“When you’ve won a World Series with the Yankees, you know a lot of famous people from Donald Trump to Billy Joel and one night Ricciuto came into our conversation and Pat Kelly said: ‘Peter, I’ve known a lot of famous people in my life and I think that Mark Ricciuto is the nicest famous person I’ve ever known’ and I reckon that sums him up pretty well,” Hurley said.
For Sarah, she’s always admired his ambition.
“He is very, very driven, he’s always thinking ahead,” she says.
“It makes me tired, sometimes, just looking at him, because I can tell his brain is ticking over at night-time thinking about everything and he’s always thinking about the future and always trying to help other people with their businesses too.”
And for Ricciuto, helping others is probably the biggest learning he’ll take out of 2020.
“I’ve made a commitment that I don’t want to lose friendships over what’s been happening in the footy world because it’s been challenging at times,” he muses.
“And just day-to-day checking in on people to make sure they’re OK. That’s been more important than ever with uncertainty around jobs and careers.”
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Originally published as Candid chat: Those who know Mark Ricciuto best reveal what’s driving the Crows legend-turned-board member
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