CYRIL Rioli says he’s ahead of schedule compared to this time last year, as he aims to play another full season in 2016.
Having been hampered by persistent hamstring issues for much of his career, a fitter and stronger Rioli enjoyed an outstanding 2015 and looms as an even more dangerous prospect for opposition clubs next season.
“Last year when we came up here we set out a plan of how we were going to attack the pre-season and I’m a bit ahead of schedule of what we did last year,” the 2015 Norm Smith Medallist said.
A focus on taking care of his body through improved recovery and diet is something that helped Rioli to record arguably his career-best season in 2015.
“Just looking after my body and what I’m putting in it is something that I watch a lot more and definitely helps me transfer that into games and training, so I’m just looking after myself and training as hard as I can," he said.
While Rioli claimed his fourth premiership in 2015, as well as the Norm Smith Medal and multiple match winning performances in 2015, he isn’t getting ahead of himself with his aims for the upcoming season, cautioned by past seasons marred by injury.
“Watching when [I’ve been] injured, it cuts me up a bit, so just being out there on the football field with my teammates, and after all the hard work that we’ve done during the pre-season, when it comes to the season I don’t want to be injured so just being out there and playing (is the aim)," he said.
Rioli also said he and his teammates shouldn’t expect to hear the end of Ryan Schoenmakers’ frisbee-throwing nous anytime soon, after the versatile key position player landed an extraordinary shot into a wheelie bin on the team’s pre-season camp in Mooloolaba.
“Definitely, I think we’ll hear about that a fair bit during the year," Rioli said.
The Hawks’ pre-season camp concludes on December 20.
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