Last weekend Riley joined an illustrious group of players in winning a Star Search nomination (the SANFL equivalent of the NAB AFL Rising Star) in his league debut.
The midfielder/half-back picked up 28 possessions, three marks and laid five tackles in a best-on-ground performance for Sturt.
The 18-year-old started the season in the SANFL reserves and said playing senior football was a massive step up.
“The speed of the game is a lot quicker than the reserves and the bodies are bigger, but I enjoyed every minute of it and played a pretty good game so you can’t ask for much more than that,” Riley said.
“It was a bit difficult at the start of the year getting to know the blokes at Sturt because I was spending so much time at the Crows, but it’s a good club and a good bunch of guys.
“They all got around me for my first game and that gave me a lot of confidence.”
Riley joined the Crows full-time in November, after spending a year aligned to the club through the NSW Scholarship program and it only took a few training sessions for his teammates to draw comparisons with his tough, uncompromising style of play.
“The club told us new guys to choose a mentor, someone we felt comfortable with and one day after training Jared Petrenko came up to me and said, ‘you play the same sort of style I play and you remind me a bit of myself when I first got to the club. Would you be interested in me helping you out a bit?’ Riley said.
“I was stoked with that. I was a bit underdone when I first got here, so I needed all the help I could get and I really appreciated Pup (Petrenko) doing that for me.”
Riley credits his grandad Jim Reidy, who passed away after a battle with cancer last year, as his mentor off the field.
Reidy played for Richmond in the VFL and helped steer his grandson towards a career in the AFL in the rugby league heartland of Wollongong.
“My grandad played for Richmond, so my mum grew up with that footy background. When I was old enough to play juniors my parents signed me up and I just loved it,” he said.
“I think grandad would be pretty proud of me. He was always encouraging me with my football, which was a big help because a lot of my mates played rugby league and tried to convince me to get over to rugby. I played a few games of rugby league in juniors, but I got more enjoyment out of AFL.”
The budding sports scientist will make history if and when he’s selected to make his AFL debut and, while he’s happy to be the first AFL player from the region he certainly doesn’t want to be the last.
“It’s a great achievement to be the first guy from Illawarra on an AFL list, but there are a couple of kids in the NSW/ACT Rams team this year that will be looking to get on an AFL list in this year’s draft. Hopefully, I can have a bit of success and be a role model to those guys, so that I’m not the only one for long.”
