Acclaimed bestselling author and Good Weekend magazine writer Konrad Marshall, who has written the book(s) on Richmond's recent history, returns to richmondfc.com.au this week for a five-part series celebrating Jack Riewoldt's 300-game milestone.

Today Konrad begins with Jack according to his long-time premiership-winning Tiger teammates Trent Cotchin, Shane Edwards and Alex Rance...

Shane Edwards remembers the first time he met Jack Riewoldt, and not for positive reasons.

The pair were of course taken in the same fateful draft - Riewoldt with pick 13 and Edwards pick 26 - yet they also crossed paths a few weeks prior, on the 2006 AFL Draft Camp at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, and in that setting they were nowhere near as famously close as they have since become.

Indeed it’s a miracle they became mates at all. But Edwards assures me this is a funny story.

“It’s funny because Jack thinks I’ve made it up - that I’m kinda taking the piss or something - but it’s 100 per cent true,” says Edwards. “Basically, when the camp was over, my Dad picked me up at the airport and asked me how it was. And I think the first thing I told him was ‘Thank God I’ll never have to see Jack Riewoldt again, because that bloke was painful.”

A little context might help. As Edwards explains, the players invited to these camps are mostly still kids, and mostly painfully shy. They barely know themselves, or one another. They speak when spoken to. They jump and sprint and mark and kick on command. At lunch they file into a dining hall, get their food and find the other kids from their state - which for Edwards meant the likes of Bryce Gibbs and Lindsay Thomas - and there they silently sit and chew.

“I remember it was so quiet, but Jack is just bellowing, talking over the top of everyone. He’s talking loudly to the coaches, too. You don’t just socially talk to coaches on draft camp - you keep your head down - but he was just yelling and having a joke with anyone, everyone! Jack was the loudest bloke there by an absolute mile. I’d never seen anyone with an extrovert level like that, with such a chainsaw voice. I thought I was through with him when I left, and then a month later we were in the same team. Sixteen years later and we’re designing a Dreamtime guernsey together. Fair to say it’s been a long road.”

Trent Cotchin met Riewoldt around the same time, too. Cotchin was one year younger, not yet old enough for the Draft, and was doing a week-long AFL experience at Richmond, as part of the AIS pathway program. If Cotchin expected studious and stern examples from the world of professional football to stand out most, Riewoldt - who was only just beginning his first pre-season - quickly dispelled that notion. “I remember this abrupt young and rather big kid that was just bouncing around everywhere. He was one of those characters who was incredibly infectious with his energy. You can hear Jack laugh from miles away. It’s hard to explain but it’s sort of deep and loud and slow, like ‘Huuh! Huuh! Huuh!’,” Cotchin says. “It’s been amazing to watch him grow into a father, because he did seem like such a kid then. I can picture him in the old training facility. We had a curtain separating the gym from the changing rooms, and I can see him bouncing out of there, jumping on senior players’ shoulders. He still has moments when he acts like a child, but it was weird to see someone that way when they’re still so junior.”

Edwards saw all of that up close. The pair didn’t play immediate senior footy, and instead spent long stints in the VFL together. They played for Coburg, a good team that won a lot of games. Riewoldt was seemingly ready-made - mercurial and audacious, with perhaps only a need to get fitter. “He’s the most naturally talented footballer I’ve seen, and that includes Dustin,” says Edwards. “I say that because Jack has almost single handedly kicked us enough goals over more than a decade to keep us competitive. And he’s always playing on someone taller and quicker. And for a long time he wasn’t on the end of great delivery. He would do it using tricks and smarts and nous, turning his man inside out.”

That’s exactly what Jack was doing one memorable day in his first season. They were playing the Northern Bullants at Preston City Oval, against the likes of Shaun Grigg and Shaun Hampson, taken in the same draft by Carlton and who would later become teammates. By half-time, Riewoldt had kicked a lazy handful of goals, and Coburg was up by more than 60 points.

“When he gets excited, Jack doesn’t know how loud he is, and he didn’t mean to yell, but he goes ‘It’s party time boys!’” says Edwards. “And we ended up losing the bloody game. And afterwards, the coach, Jade Rawlings, was just ripping into us - really going after us - and he points at Jack and goes, ‘We’ve got blokes saying it’s party time!!! Well, is it party time now?! IS IT?!!’ That’s gotta be one of the biggest sprays I’ve ever heard.”

It lives in Tiger folklore, in fact. Throughout their careers together, Edwards has uttered the phrase “Is it party time?” again and again to Riewoldt. Even the likes of Liam Baker and Patrick Naish have joined in. “We’ll literally walk past Jack at half-time and give him a little: ‘Is it party time?’” says Edwards. “And Jack will raise his eyebrows: ‘Oooof! No. It is definitely not party time’.”

Retired Richmond great Alex Rance remembers the same flair, and ability, and nonchalance. “Jack played games really early in his career, and I didn’t,” says Rance. “He was able to do things I was amazed by, and I was always envious of his talent.” In retrospect, Rance realises that he and Riewoldt were similar people, and that this is why they butted heads so frequently and fiercely. “For a little while, we were sparring partners for lack of a better word, and sometimes that would follow us off Punt Road Oval and into the change rooms,” Rance says. “But I think we almost unknowingly brought the best out of one another as strong competitors who take pride in what we do. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger - and he taught me so many things about what it’s like to play on the most talented forwards. I’ve got no doubt it allowed me to sharpen my craft.”

Still, there was a certain volatility to Riewoldt as his career progressed. I saw it come to a head in 2016, a nadir season for the Tigers before the current era of success began. In the middle of winter, the full-forward fronted one of the side’s then regular feedback sessions. It was held in the Graeme Richmond Room. I sat in the back row, while Riewoldt sat on a stool at the front of the auditorium, as the other players took turns providing him with a list of things he needed to stop doing, start doing, and keep doing. I vividly remember Riewoldt biting his lip as each morsel of add/keep/delete advice was offered. The overwhelming takeaway was for Jack to reconsider his position as an individual, whether giving harsh directions at training, or long-winded tactical explanations in meetings, or trying to win games off his own boot each weekend. It shocked him.

“I remember the session, and the principle rings true,” says Rance. “It’s one of the curses of being a talented player - sometimes you can win the game off your own boot. He can still do that now, too, but it’s not a repeatable process. There needed to be a balance between being the man and being part of the system. For me, it was never about selfishness or ego - Jack was just trying to help us win the only way he knew how.”

Rance says it’s also worth noting that this was a time when - as a team - their identity or “brand” as a side wasn’t as evident or obvious as it is now. “Maybe at that point he had to be the man to win,” Rance says. “But now there’s such a clear and selfless identity, he doesn’t have to dominate. He knows how to be a system player, and knows how to be a star, and how those two things can fit.”

Making that realisation, says Rance, was the biggest point of growth for Riewoldt - a kind of cultural recognition of how he could and should use his gifts. “Because he was such a prodigious talent, sometimes I think he struggled with people who didn’t work hard to reach the same level. He couldn’t understand how hard it was to be a battler. I mean, I was pick 18, but I wasn’t a good footballer when I got to the club,” Rance says. “Jack could see how hard it was for me to get a game - I was nearly delisted.”

Harsh feedback was also part of the methodology of the footy department. “That was our culture for a while,” says Rance. “We were quite abrasive, and that came from a place of wanting to be better. It’s not that Jack didn’t care and then later he did - it’s that he changed the way he showed you that he cared.”

Cotchin sees the same thing. Riewoldt to him has always been a player willing to bare his emotions for all - what’s changed is that he no longer immediately blurts out what he’s thinking and feeling. He takes a breath before he speaks.

“For a lot of us, 2016 was a significant moment in our careers,” says Cotchin. “You’re not as open and willing to change until you hit rock bottom, and that’s the importance of 2016.” Shortly after that disastrous home and away campaign, he and Riewoldt caught up at a cafe, and just sat there, still a little stunned the season had ended that way, with a 113-point drubbing, and a 13th place ladder finish.

“The core of the conversation was ‘The reality for us - as leaders of the footy club - is that we most likely won’t taste the ultimate success, but we need to help those who might’,” Cotchin says. “I think Daniel Rioli was one of the examples we used. We said, ‘How can we create or help a player like Daniel - or anyone who comes after him - taste the success that we won’t?’”

That became Riewoldt’s focus moving forward, quite literally in fact, as 2017 saw him emerge as a solo spearhead, central to an attacking “mosquito fleet” of incredibly young, incredibly quick forwards. “The guys he had around him in that forward line in 2017 had barely played a handful of games, and so there was this new nurturing nature in his leadership, taking guys under his wing,” says Cotchin. “He suddenly had this new responsibility that he thrived on. He was a father figure. When he shifted his focus from what was motivating him - extrinsic to intrinsic - the better he performed and the better he felt.”

This was also the year in which he was welcomed back into the leadership group of the club, but Rance, who was a vice captain along with Riewoldt that year, says there was even a sacrificial component to the enthusiastic way Riewoldt assumed that 2IC role, backing the skipper.

“If Trent Cotchin wasn’t Trent Cotchin, then Jack would have been the man,” Rance says. “He would have been a three-time premiership captain. And I think he knows that. And I think he wanted that, early days. But he selflessly identified that Trent was the man. And that lent itself to team harmony. If you have two people who want the same thing - two alphas at the top, fighting for the throne - it can disrupt everything. It’s one thing I’ll always respect about Jack, for him to realise he doesn’t need to be captain of the football club to be a leader.”

Riewoldt became a teacher, too, using that vaunted football brain.

“He knows the game, intimately. He’s actually got the best football mind I’ve ever seen,” Rance says. “In reviews, you can tell when some people aren’t getting it - they can’t see the bigger picture. Remember those images you could buy, that look like squiggly lines and colour, and you look long enough and - Oh, it’s a boat - the image comes out? (He’s talking about the Magic Eye illusions, popular in the 1990s.) That’s the game for Jack. Everyone else was looking at a mess, but it was all clear to him. He could see system and see space and see advantage better than anyone I’ve met in football.”

And that’s always been helpful, says Edwards, particularly when things aren’t going well on field. “If the side is struggling, it’s often most detrimental to the forwards, because they’re up one end and not able to do much,” Edwards says, “so Jack obviously wants to get to the bottom of it, and starts investigating. I really don’t think anyone cares as much as Jack does about his teammates, and how we’re playing, and the way we’re playing.”

Edwards would see Rance doing the same thing, the two key pillars trying to piece together the puzzle, unlock the solution. But the best part, he adds, was their willingness to listen to their captain. “Cotch might be quiet, but he would point them both in the right direction, and they would follow,” Edwards says. “If the game was a film, Rancey and Jack were like the lead actors. Cotch is the director.”

Within this framework, Riewoldt developed his own autonomy, too, leading little initiatives to show care and investment - to foster that all important “connection” the Richmond culture values so dearly. Take the 2017 off-season as an example. Instead of luxuriating in a long sojourn on a tropical beach, or a meandering trip around the world, Riewoldt organised a multi-day camping trip for the newest batch of players to be drafted to the club. He wrangled other senior players - Edwards, along with Nick Vlastuin, Toby Nankervis and Kane Lambert - to hike the Overland Track in his home state of Tasmania, hauling packs filled with tents and sleeping bags and food. Not long into their time at Tigerland, all of the newest recruits - Jack Higgins, Callum Coleman-Jones, Noah Balta, Patrick Naish, Ben Miller, Liam Baker and Derek Eggmolesse-Smith - found themselves trekking in Tassie with five flag winners.

“Jack sold the camp like it would be easy, but it was an absolute grind, sunny then hailing, getting soaked and freezing. Some of the young guys had shin splints for a month,” Edwards says, laughing. “But the point is, not many older blokes want to sacrifice a week of their holidays, to plan something like that, rally a bunch of senior players, organise these new guys. This was after winning a premiership, in our time off. It was just Jack going that extra mile to make sure that next season started as well as it could. It’s a pretty special mixture of leadership, having that thought and then taking each required step. He did it like it was nothing.”

More to the point, he shows that kind of care constantly. When the team was in the Queensland hub last season, and Edwards and his partner were in Melbourne having just had a baby, Riewoldt made sure their eventual trip north went smoothly. “Jack organised for our room to be set up and waiting. Baths, cots, nappies - all off his own bat. He’s got a lot of connections around town, too, and I know he uses those to help out the younger guys, getting them clothes and boots. He’s really generous in that sense - always spreading his wealth.”

This season - his 15th - has also seen a beautiful resurgence or renewal in his football, which is again replete with games in which he’s deeply involved in the outcome, not just through team play but big goals and soaring grabs, including a levitating and brave Mark of the Year contender. “There’s not many things I like watching more than Jack in full flight,” says Edwards. “Last year I felt sorry for him with some of the criticism he copped, because a lot of the time his quiet games are the result of the way the team is moving the ball - or it’s him playing a selfless role. He honestly doesn’t care that much about the high marks and long goals though. His favourite moments - I know for a fact - are his two chase down tackles in the 2017 Grand Final. Deep down he knows how special they were.”

Who would have thought that young Jack Riewoldt - the bouncing bon vivant of Draft Camp, the gifted skallywag of his junior class - would emerge a decade-and-a-half later as an elder statesman of his club, and indeed the league, telling fireside stories about sticking important tackles.

“It’s an incredible story,” says Cotchin, “about a guy that came in pretty raw, with pure talent, into a system, and like all of us has had his trials and tribulations, who’s just grown into such a man, a father and husband - such a human being, more than a human doing.”