Race car superstar McLaughlin credits Jack Riewoldt for career pole position

Jack Riewoldt will become just the fourth Tigers player to reach 300 games but friends say his legacy outside of football shines just as brightly.

Champion IndyCar driver Scott McLaughlin has paid tribute to Jack Riewoldt ahead of the Tiger’s 300th game, saying he had been a critical influence to his career. Picture Rohan Kelly

A day after Richmond won a historic grand final in Brisbane last year, Jack Riewoldt and Tom Lynch went for a sedate spin in a golf cart with the premiership cup.

The champion forwards set footage of their version of the premiership waltz to the Fleetwood Mac classic “Dreams” and it went viral.

The victory lap at their Gold Coast hub was stark in contrast to a dash four years earlier that had the Tigers star, who plays his 300th game on Friday night, screaming in fear around the bends of Sandown Raceway.

Riewoldt has become the firmest of friends with champion race car driver Scott McLaughlin, with the pair co-hosts of a podcast called Balls and Bumpers.

That wild ride at Sandown, shortly before the 2017 grand final, cemented a relationship that has proven mutually beneficial to both men as they furthered their sporting excellence.

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McLaughlin went on to win three Supercar Championships before heading to the United States and credits the friendship for helping his transition from contender to champion.

Riewoldt is now a three-time premiership player, a three-time All Australian and a three-time Coleman Medallist who is soon to become Richmond’s fourth 300 game player.

Interviewed this week in America, where he is competing in the IndyCar Series for Team Penske, McLaughlin said the pair first hit it off while watching the Anzac Day clash in 2017.

“He was a scaredy cat on that ride. I could hear him screaming. And we’d struggled to fit him into the car,” McLaughlin said.

“We’d met in the Fox Footy corporate box and spoke about each other’s sport a fair bit and I invited him out for a ride in my car later that year at Sandown.

“It’s always been nice chatting to Jack as he understood the pressure of playing sport at the highest level.”

Riewoldt reaches the milestone when he steps out against Brisbane at Metricon Stadium in a game that is critical to Richmond’s season given a surprising form slump.

He met with club legends Kevin Bartlett (403 games) and Francis Bourke (300 games) in front of the statue of Jack Dyer (312 games) at the MCG on Thursday ahead of the game.

The Tasmanian-born Tiger was a cocksure teenager who told Port Adelaide premiership coach Mark Williams that he would play 300 games when interviewed before being drafted.

The cousin of St Kilda champion Nick Riewoldt, he was a mercurial talent.

Fellow Tasmanians Jade Rawlings and Matthew Richardson were early role models to mimic and follow.

By 2010, in just his fourth season, Riewoldt was a Coleman Medallist for the first time when he kicked 78 goals. He was also the AFL’s champion goalkicker in 2012 and 2018.

As outstanding as Riewoldt is as a footballer, it took time for the cocky kid to mature and to understand the merits of being selfless compared to selfish.

Richmond fans should be grateful, for that transition has been critical to their recent premiership successes. And the partnership with Lynch is a case in point.

As a forward approaching 30, Riewoldt could have been forgiven for having concerns about the recruitment of a talent as outstanding as Lynch, who was lured from the Gold Coast.

Instead he has set about making the partnership work and the pair have flourished to the benefit of Richmond.

They have undone opponents as a one-two punch, or sacrificed their own games for the betterment of each other and fellow champions including Dustin Martin.

Legends such as Tony Lockett and Jason Dunstall were relied on to kick bags of goals.

Modern day champions such as Riewoldt, Tom Hawkins and Josh Kennedy are as potent when sharing the football as they are in snaring goals for themself.

“I think, ultimately, the one thing I’m most proud of is that I reckon I’ve gone from being a selfish player,” Riewoldt said on Fox Footy’s AFL 360.

“And not ultimately selfish, but just not understanding what it’s like to be a great team players, to what I feel like is one of my greatest strengths now, that I’m certainly one of our best team players in terms of the way I go about it.

“It changed my whole mindset on how I wanted to play football and what I wanted to be known for.”

Richmond captain Trent Cotchin described reaching the milestone as an incredible achievement and effort.

Shaun Grigg, who was closest to Riewoldt when the final siren rang in the 2017 grand final against Adelaide that ended a 37-year drought, is among those to praise the star.

“What I love about Jack is the bigger the game, the bigger the moment, the better that (he) seemed to play,” he said. “You love the occasion and you seem to rise to it. You are such a great teammate, so caring.”

It is the caring nature that McLaughlin, the race car driver, has found most helpful and appealing.

They shared career highlights in 2019.

The Kiwi was at the MCG to watch Riewoldt succeed, who in turn was on the mountain at Bathurst a fortnight later for McLaughlin’s magic moment. But both have also been through particularly tough moments and assisted each other.

Riewoldt cited the early years at Richmond when success was scarce. The loss to the Magpies in the 2018 preliminary final stung.

For McLaughlin, there was the devastation of losing the Supercars championship race to Jamie Whincup in the final race of the 2017 season.

The Tiger introduced the race car driver to Emma Murray, a mindset coach who had helped Richmond find a winning way, and she has been a factor in McLaughlin’s rise to stardom.

“It’s not something I asked for. He just rang me out of the blue one day and said I should get in touch,” McLaughlin told The Australian.

“That’s the type of person he is, someone completely team oriented. Sure, he toots his own horn a bit when he needs to. But so he should.

“But family and friends and team come first for him. From that first meeting with Emma, it has completely changed my life on and off the track. The person I have to thank for that is Jack.

“Most people close to Jack would be hard pressed to say that he hasn’t influenced their career in some way. To do that over a career of ten years plus is very impressive.”