Rioli was the talk of the town before the game had even started with former Essendon champion Matthew Lloyd critical of the Hawk in his column in the Sunday Age.

Lloyd said he felt the dual premiership player had "underachieved" in his seven years at Hawthorn and accused him of lacking overall conditioning and not setting the bar high enough.

Rioli hit back in the best way possible - with his finest performance of the season.

A solid contributor over four quarters, Rioli upped the ante in the third term by kicking four of Hawthorn's eight goals. He finished the game with the four majors, seven tackles, and 17 disposals (including 11 contested) at 100 per cent efficiency to be the No.1 ranked player on the ground.

Shaun Burgoyne was staunch in his defence of his teammate, opening an invitation for Lloyd to watch training and see just how dedicated and hard working Rioli is.

"If you come out to training - and he's more than welcome to come out as people watch us in the stands - and every player, not just Cyril, trains really hard," Burgoyne told AFL.com.au.

"You can't play AFL footy if you don't train hard and he's one of those guys. Obviously he's more of an explosive player but he's working on his endurance and that's the same as myself and a number of players.

"There's probably very few players that have the mixture of speed and endurance. He's getting fitter every year, he's looking after his body as best as he ever has over the past couple of years. He's only getting better, he's only 25 and still has more to give.

"Cyril for us, first and foremost, is all about defensive pressure. He comes out and puts that on. Kicking goals and doing the rest of it, that's just a by-product of his pressure. His goals are going to come, we don't judge any of our forwards on goals."

Rioli had seven disposals, five tackles and kicked one goal in the loss to Geelong last Monday, his lowest output for 2014.

That performance "frustrated" Lloyd, prompting his comments on Sunday.

Coach Alastair Clarkson said he was pleased with Rioli's response.

"Cyril played well," Clarkson said after the win over the Tigers.

"He was able to balance the offence and defence part of his game really well. Last week he worked really, really hard for us defensively but was just having to do too much work on the defensive side of his game and chasing a lot which made it tough for him to be as dangerous as we'd like him to be when we've got the footy.

"He was a bit better on both sides of his game today and got a good result and still had eight to 10 tackles and was able to hurt on the scoreboard too. He's a pretty important player for us.

"Despite what's written or said about Cyril, we're pleased with the role he plays for us and hope it continues on next week but he's no more important than any other player in our side."

On Monday, Rioli tweeted that he wasn't overly concerned about the external criticism: