{"id":5027,"date":"2025-07-19T05:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T05:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/5027\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T05:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T05:13:08","slug":"cyril-rioli-was-happiest-at-hawthorn-before-shock-retirement-claims-insider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/5027\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyril Rioli was ‘happiest’ at Hawthorn before shock retirement, claims insider"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Hawthorn high performance boss Andrew Russell has claimed disgruntled ex-Hawk Cyril Rioli was ‘happiest had ever been’ at the club just before his shock retirement.<\/p>\n

Four years after Rioli finished his AFL career, a racism saga involving Hawthorn and a group of Indigenous players – including Rioli – emerged with a settlement finally being\u00a0reached \u201cwithout determination of any parties\u2019 allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell – being interviewed as part of Herald Sun’s Sacked<\/a> podcast – stated he believed the Rioli family had been looked after in a exemplary fashion by Hawthorn while at the club, and that Rioli’s comments about his personal happiness supported that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way Cyril was treated at the football club, I\u2019ve never seen anyone else treated as well as Cyril. I\u2019ve never seen anyone treated with as much respect as Cyril and his family,\u201d Russell said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe week before Cyril left he told me it\u2019s the happiest he had ever been at the football club. Because he had done his knee, he was coming back, I spent a lot of time with him. He said, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s great, I can\u2019t wait to play with Shaun Burgoyne in his 350th\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cGee, didn\u2019t that (racism saga) get out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Russell also said he didn’t believe then-Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson was a part of any racist behaviour at the club.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe only wanted the best for people. We wanted to help people, we wanted to help all those boys create lives for themselves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake money, create legacies, all those things. He was the same with everyone. He was the same with everyone and it had nothing to do with (race). He was like that with (Luke) Hodge, he was the same with Jarryd Roughead, he was like that with me. He was like that with Cyril.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Hawthorn high performance boss Andrew Russell has claimed disgruntled ex-Hawk Cyril Rioli was ‘happiest had ever been’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-5027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}