Life of Riley

Aiden Riley

ADELAIDE rookie Aidan Riley already has a claim to fame, as the first footballer from Wollongong to make it onto an AFL list, but he’s determined his trailblazing won’t end there.

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.