RIOLI’S AFL FUTURE CLOUDED BY CHARGE

WEST Coast Eagles premiership player Willie Rioli’s future with the club is up in the air after the forward avoided a conviction for possessing cannabis at Darwin Airport.

The 25-year-old was handed a 12-month good behaviour bond on Wednesday after pleading guilty in the Darwin Local Court to possessing almost 25g of the drug on April 23. The court heard Rioli was about to board a flight home to the Tiwi Islands when he was stopped by a police sniffer dog and produced a package containing 24.23g of cannabis from the front of his shorts.

His barrister, Mark Thomas, said Rioli, pictured, had apologised to West Coast but it was still unclear what action the club or AFL would take. Mr Thomas said Rioli had already paid a “very heavy price” before arriving at court due to “effectively, what amounts to a national humiliation” via the media.

“(He) still has every hope, if he can, to return to the West Coast Eagles but that, in a sense, is outside his hands,” he said. Mr Thomas said Rioli’s situation was “unique for so many reasons”, including that he had attended more funerals in the past two years than his 38 games for the Eagles in what he described as a “cascade of death”.

Mr Thomas said despite a difficult upbringing and “unlike so many of his peers who have fallen foul of the law”, Rioli had “managed to raise himself to the pinnacle of professional sport”. But prosecutor Patrick Curtin said Rioli’s doping ban meant he was not a “cleanskin” and “the only unique thing about him is he’s a sports star”.

Mr Curtin said while Rioli had apologised to his club, “he hasn’t apologised to the people of the Tiwi Islands” for trying to bring drugs into the community.