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Barrett: Banged-up Rooey still the Saints’ soul

Nick Riewoldt remains the Saints’ heartbeat

GRAND Final week, 2013.

At the request of Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt agrees to meet.

It’s going to be a chat about life beyond football, or so Riewoldt thinks after agreeing to the catch-up, as well as the business doors that McGuire can always open.

And it was, kind of. But of primary concern to McGuire on this day was a determination to convince the superstar Saint to finish his playing career as a Magpie.

It was a typically compelling McGuire sell, one that made sense to an ageing key position forward who had given his absolute all to a club that forever seemed to be hit with circumstances that barred it from the ultimate glory.

At the time of the meeting, Scott Watters was about to be sacked as coach, just as Malcolm Blight had been half way through Riewoldt’s first year as a player back in 2001, and Grant Thomas, a huge influence, five years later.

After three unsuccessful Grand Finals, great mentor Ross Lyon had walked out as St Kilda coach two years earlier.

Close mates Nick Dal Santo and Brendon Goddard respectively were about to leave or had left the year before. Another great mate, Luke Ball, had exited the Saints four years earlier and had secured a premiership with the Pies.

Ruckman Ben McEvoy was about to be traded to that season’s premiership team, and would become a two-time premiership player just two seasons later.

In the same week, the great Buddy Franklin, preparing to play Fremantle in a Grand Final, actually knew he was going to leave his club, which in contrast to Riewoldt’s had perennially seemed blessed with the most fortunate of hands.

There were so many reasons for Riewoldt to succumb to McGuire’s pitch. Footy people viewed him as a physically and mentally banged-up, about-to-turn-31 key position warrior who had given his all, and then some, to a club which perennially had been dealt the unluckiest of hands.

There wasn’t much reason to stay.

Riewoldt said thanks, but no thanks to McGuire. And there had been other offers before that, too. It says pretty much all that needs to be said about him.

Riewoldt won another St Kilda best and fairest, his sixth, the very next season.

Riewoldt is still banged up. He’s nearly 35. He left Etihad Stadium on a medical trolley just three weeks ago believing his career was finished when he heard and felt some terrible noises and movements in his knee.

The footy world feared it had seen the last of Nick Riewoldt when he injured his knee. Picture: AFL Photos

St Kilda won its first game of 2017 last weekend, but wouldn’t have done so without Riewoldt’s 28 disposals, 12 marks and three goals.

Riewoldt is still the superstar he always was, just a remodelled one now playing a role very different – yet clearly equally crucially to the Saints – to the one that secured him five All-Australian honours.

Riewoldt is NFL-obsessed. While a Houston Texans and JJ Watt fan, he watched with interest how an equally physically spent Ray Lewis, only months before Riewoldt’s meeting with McGuire, had led the Baltimore Ravens to a Super Bowl in his final game.

Super Impose defeated the hottest field ever assembled in an Australian horse race when he won the 1992 Cox Plate as an eight-year-old. Shane Crawford’s 305th, and last, AFL match in 2008 was a premiership.

Fairytales sometimes happen. Riewoldt will almost certainly enter an 18th season in 2018.

McGuire, well aware of what North Melbourne did with Brent Crosswell, Barry Davis, John Rantall and Doug Wade in 1975, and Stan Alves in 1977, might even have another crack at luring him across to the Pies in late September this year.

Having said ‘no’ once before, Riewoldt won’t leave now.

And while that’s good news for Saints fans, it’s even more important for tyro Paddy McCartin, who gets another season to learn from the man who was chosen as the No.1 draft pick 14 years before him.

Twitter: @barrettdamian

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