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 concludes with Peggy O'Neal, Brendon Gale, Damien Hardwick, Matthew Richardson, Michael Roach and Francis Bourke reflecting on Jack Riewoldt's Tigerland legacy. 

Peggy O’Neal remembers the day Jack Riewoldt showed up at Punt Road Oval. There was an air of expectation. It was that famous surname. It had to be.

“Immediately - before we knew him - he had some gold dust on him,” O’Neal says, smiling inside the Rowena Corner Store. “Then this kid showed up with dyed bright red spiky hair, and a purple combi van. I remember thinking, ‘He looks like a different type of person’, which was accurate.”

Matthew Richardson immediately recalls a confident kid, and not in a bad way. “It was a good thing,” he says. “Some kids come in and they’re in their shell, but you could see straight away that Jack was a big personality with big belief in his ability. He wasn’t afraid to be himself.”

Quickly he was given the nickname ‘Pup’, as the heir apparent to Richardson, otherwise known as the ‘Big Dog’. Richardson doesn’t know who came up with that one. “But he could have been called ‘Jumping Jack’,” he says. “The way he timed his leap was phenomenal - he could always get a sit. You just knew he was a class player, and had footy smarts.”

He saw that footy IQ early, and often, and later - most prominently in the third quarter of the 2019 Preliminary Final against Geelong, when Riewoldt flew into a marking contest not to stick the grab but to deflect the incoming bomb into the waiting arms of Dustin Martin. “That’s just what he does,” Richardson says. “He thinks ahead of the game.”

The sticky hands stood out in the early days, too, in training sessions and matches, during the three years both men were on the same senior list. Talent recognises talent - in this case the ability of a tall forward to play wet weather ground level footy. “Wayne Carey was a great wet weather player, too,” Richardson says. “That comes from that ability to be clean. It makes sense. Jack would have played a fair bit of footy in ordinary conditions, in the mud and rain in Hobart.”

Brendon Gale is as good a person as any to judge such gifts, hailing from the same island state. “Jack’s old man was a legend: Chris ‘Cabbage’ Riewoldt,” Gale says. “He was finishing as I was starting in Tassie. He was this big powerful blonde German machine, quite robotic. On the small heavy grounds, he was a dominant player for Clarence. He would just grind players into the dirt, where Jack had a real feel for the footy.”

That feel - that instinct - is what stood out. Gale’s earliest memories of Riewoldt were of a gifted footballer - in the purest and truest sense of the word. “He knew his craft. He had a deficiency in leg speed - when the game was evolving into one of athleticism and power - but I was constantly amazed at the other tools he brought to bear, to put himself in the right spot.”

Gale recalls a Friday night game in 2010, against the Saints, when Riewoldt kicked six goals. “I bumped into Peter Hudson, this huge figure in Tasmanian footy, and he said ‘That young Jack Riewoldt, he’s the best judge of the ball in flight since…’ Since you, Peter?” Gale says, laughing. “Jack was young, but he was already the best going around. He could just read the footy.”

The game seemed to reveal itself to him like the pages of a textbook. The more games he played, the more lessons he learned. And his thirst for those lessons only grew. Damien Hardwick likes to call Riewoldt a student of the game, but he corrects himself - that’s not the right vernacular to characterise his obsession.

“He’s a footy guy, and a footy head,” Hardwick says. “And in the modern age of AFL, there’s very few guys that actually really, really love and study the game. Back when I played, the vast majority couldn’t wait to see the next contest, and that’s not the case any more. They want to get away from it. But Jack loves the intricacies, and understanding how we operate. He challenges your thoughts. He’s like a coach, really. Occasionally he can get his mind set on something that’s not necessarily going to benefit the team, but for every 10 ideas he comes up with, four might be brilliant.”

I remember this. In my time inside Richmond, watching them plan campaigns and prepare for matches, Riewoldt was always the most engaged player - the one with the most to offer to say or suggest. Hardwick says the player most like that from his career would be former Tigers assistant coach Brendon Lade - who could see the pieces of the puzzle better than most, or at least differently, identifying unseen problems and posing novel solutions.

“The great thing is that now, instead of Jack doing all the talking in regard to the answers, he’s asking the questions,” Hardwick says. “He knows all the answers, and now he’s demanding them from teammates. He’s bringing others along for the ride. It’s a progression.”

Riewoldt could make a great coach himself one day, in fact, but Hardwick chuckles as he points out that a career in media is much easier. “You’re never in the chair, you can make barbs and assumptions from afar, without putting yourself on the line,” he says. “But he’ll be a great performer in media - he is already - because he works so hard. You can see how thorough he is with his research. A lot of people in media give the stock standard answer that the man in the bar could give, but few offer the kind of insight Jack can.” 

Of course, his comfort with a microphone, or standing up at the front of any room, sometimes does come back to bite him on the arse. It did so recently, at a team meeting to talk about the Indigenous jumper he designed with Shane Edwards. “We were talking through it, because we actually send a jumper to every Indigenous player who’s played with us, in our history,” Hardwick says. “Anyway, at some point Jack says ‘I’m the first non-Indigenous man to design an Indigenous jumper’. And the whole playing group and coaching staff gave him this standing ovation,” Hardwick says, laughing. “He was quite embarrassed about that.”

Whether through humour or passion or unvarnished vulnerability, Gale says Riewoldt has an unmatched capacity to bring people together. He’s what Gale likes to call “a connector”.

“He’s really grown up in the club. He’s come over as a boy and become a man here, so he’s very invested in the entire place. And it means that he takes the time to invest in people, becoming part of that strong and unified culture,” Gale says. “And that’s great for our staff, because they want to work at a football club - not at a bank, or an advertising agency. It’s important for them to see the guys, and for guys like Jack to know the staff and admin - and the role they all play.”

He’s been doing this for years. O’Neal remembers his forays into club leadership and administration as far back as 2013. This rebuilding version of Richmond had begun setting new year on year records for membership, but were still in the bottom quartile for women signing up. They held focus groups, to figure out why women weren’t joining in the same numbers as men.

“Jack volunteered to be the player to come,” O’Neal says. “And we talked about women and how they’re perceived, and I remember he talked about having a woman coach in his junior football. He was quite progressive in the way he was thinking, and I think he started to expand his thoughts about what a football club could be or do.”

O’Neal says he became a “barometer” not just for the side, but the organisation. “He’s such a charismatic kind of figure that he probably didn’t appreciate his power,” she says. “But as he moved from ‘me’ to ‘us’, it was wonderful to see the influence he could capitalise on - with a good heart and good thinking.”

She remembers how he helped soothe a family who had lost their baby son, or proudly wore a yellow and black coat made for him by an elderly widow in NSW. “He’s that sort of good guy,” she says. “I don’t like to ask much of him, but I do once a year or so, and he never says no. There’s this heart to him.”

I like that O’Neal identified heart. I remember doing the same thing. In the back half of the 2017 season, as finals were approaching, the man responsible for the club’s leadership and culture program, Shane McCurry, asked me to write a few words for each of the team leaders - Trent Cotchin, Alex Rance and Jack Riewoldt. The letters were written not directly to them, and yet they were written for them to read. I wrote of Jack that he is my favourite player, and not merely for his unique mix of sacrificial and mercurial football, but for what he does away from the oval:

I’ve seen it in the way he seeks out people standing shyly against the wall, and extends his hand to shake. The way he knows the names behind the faces of the staff on the other side of the building. I’ve seen it following one of the very first games I watched as an outsider – a pre-season match in which Reece Conca tore his hamstring off the bone. The midfielder was in the medical rooms, his face a mess of tears and snot. Jack was the man clutching him in a long-held hug.

But I’ve seen this quality most clearly in the rooms before every single game. While other players rope themselves off in private warm-ups, or hide themselves inside Beats by Dre headphones, Riewoldt makes his way directly to the fans. He looks for the youngest ones, with their socks pulled up to the knee, yellow and black ribbon tied into their ponytails, and he strolls behind the steel fence to greet them in person. Watching them chat and giggle and grin, it becomes clear – plainly – that it doesn’t matter what number they wear on their guernsey. Always they leave with a smile, a story, and a new favourite player.

It was only a few months later, in February 2018, that O’Neal saw this side of Riewoldt in another setting. The club had broken its flag drought, and were now trying to consolidate what they had learned. On this glorious summer day, all the players and coaches and executives and staff were summoned to the middle of the MCG. On the big screen, there was a video of moments from the field, and from inside Punt Road. Trent Cotchin spoke on behalf of the team. Shane Edwards did the Welcome to Country. And Jack did the Acknowledgement of Country.  

“And Jack spoke so astutely about how much he’s learned,” O’Neal says. “It was something I saw in glimpses early on - this interest in other things and other people. You always remember your purpose standing in the middle of a place like the MCG. I think he realised his mantle to wear.”

And he has worn it ever since, with grace and resilience. He will need both moving forward, too. Richardson tells me just how physically hard it is to reach a milestone like 300 games. He remembers his own struggle, which ended on 282 games. He remembers the tendonitis, the surgery, the efforts to get back and play - the continual degradation of a body broken in so many places over so many years. Richardson’s last game was against Sydney, when he snapped his hammy in the first 10 minutes, then stood in the goal square the rest of the day.  

“You’ve gotta basically play 15 years without being injured. I played 17 years and missed maybe 75 games to injury,” Richardson says. “He’s been durable with his body, and that’s not always a fluke. It means he looks after himself. He would be working at it all the time, and that can get on top of you. Ice baths, physio, massage - treatment becomes a full time job. You have to be consistently professional. But he looks like he’s running to the line, not limping.”

I ask another Tassie Tiger spearhead about the end of the long road. The inimitable Michael Roach, who kicked 607 goals, is self-deprecating, joking about Riewoldt comfortably passing his tally for majors, and how Riewoldt’s courageous high grab earlier this year might rival his famous “Mark of the Century” from 1979.

“It doesn’t worry me,” Roach says, laughing. “I actually got a few texts from people when Shai Bolton took his mark: ‘You might be in a bit of trouble Roachy!’ And then Jack goes and takes that amazing mark. I wouldn’t have done it! But the more marks he takes, and goals he kicks, the more games Richmond win.”

As for 300 games, Roach remembers how hard it was to run out for 200 of his own. He had just come back from a major achilles operation, and was jogging around in the seconds, making up numbers. “I couldn’t get a kick. I was embarrassing myself. I wanted to help the team, but I couldn’t get out of a gallop. I knew my time had come.”

Kevin Bartlett brought him back into the seniors to play his 200th and final game. Roach chose Carlton, at Waverley, and got his parents across from Tasmania. He was quiet that day, but in the last few minutes took to the field, and got a handball from Craig Lambert, while trying to get back to full forward. “I kicked it, and it went through for a goal as the siren blew,” he says. “I thought ‘That’ll do me fine’. I was so happy to achieve 200 games, and then to have Jack play 300? It shows he’s just a fella who knows how to adapt - an amazing player.”

It’s hard to know what it must feel like to get to 300, so I ask the last Richmond player who did exactly that, the great Francis Bourke. His 300th was against South Melbourne, and he felt as nervous as though he was playing his first.

“The closer I got to it, the more I was anxious to get it past me,” Bourke says. “I was hanging on as a player - form wise - by the skin of my fingernails. But I felt that day like I’d really achieved something. In theory, playing game 300 should be no different than 299, but somehow - I suppose to do with exceeding my own expectations from my beginnings with the Tigers - exceeding them by a huge margin, a solar system, after coming down for a tryout 15 years earlier - it meant a great deal.”

Bourke says the distances modern players now run, and the regularity and toughness of the tackling, not to mention the ballistic speed of collisions, should not be understated. “It’s much more intense, and it all takes a toll. In my view 300 games is now harder to reach than ever. And the fact that Jack’s been able to do it as a forward, which is never a nice place to play - you’re always in the sights of the opposition - makes it all the more remarkable.”

I wonder how he thinks he would have fared lining up against Riewoldt.

“If I had to play on him - defend against Jack - I would have got out my rosary beads and prayed that we cleared the ball out of centre every time,” he says. “I’ve had little to do with Jack over the journey, but I find him very likeable and friendly, and a person who advertises his values - good values - and has progressed through his life and career with great aplomb. He is a credit to himself and his family - a person worthy of celebration.”

Gale has the final word, and it’s this: 300 games is not something players do every week. It should - and does - mean a great deal to Riewoldt and the club. It does nothing less than tie this era to his legend.

“His legacy is that of a young man, part of a group who collectively took responsibility to make a difference, to change and evolve, and what they’ve achieved is historic - to not just break a drought but establish a dynasty,” Gale says. “I hate that word, but three premierships in four years is of historical significance. It broke the cycle. They broke the cycle. He broke the cycle.”