Rioli on road to recovery after year of turmoil

CYRIL Rioli says he considered quitting football after his father’s heart attack.

Hawthorn’s four-time premiership superstar and Norm Smith medallist was rocked to the core when Cyril Sr suffered a near-fatal heart attack in the week before last year’s grand final. Rioli retreated home to the Northern Territory on an extended break that he thought he might not return from.

“My dad, he was classed dead,” Rioli said. “To get the phone call that he’d had a heart attack and they weren’t too sure whether he was going to make it, a lot of things were going through my head.

“That was one of them [retiring]. I thought if I could keep my dad and get rid of all the accolades that I’ve had, I’d definitely do that without a doubt.”

Rioli’s 2017 season ended prematurely because of a knee injury against the Brisbane Lions in Round 8, but that setback paled into insignificance when his dad was forced to undergo heart surgery.

“You ask anyone who plays the game and you can’t play unless you’re mentally right. For me, it shook me up quite a bit,” he said.

Rioli oversaw a large chunk of his father’s return to health while working on his own fitness program and appeared happy and healthy at a sponsorship announcement yesterday.

But Round 1 appears unlikely, with the three-time All-Australian revealing he was only five weeks into a special 10-week training block.