COUNTDOWN TO DARWIN | THE RIOLIS

THE AMAZING RIOLIS 

Extract from Bulldogs Unleashed | South Fremantle 1960-2020

First came Sebastian, then Maurice and the others that followed the football supply line from Melville Island off Darwin to Fremantle Oval included Manny, Lawrence, John, Cyril Jnr and Willie Snr. Meet the Rioli brothers, well seven out of the eight, who at one time or another played with South Fremantle, in varying grades and with mixed success but with a talent for entertaining and delighting supporters while bewildering opposition players.

Of course, half-brothers Dean and Ben – Sebastian’s boys – and their first cousin Willie Jnr (South Fremantle Colts) of West Coast fame all followed in the boots of their illustrious fathers and uncles. Shannon and Clinton Rioli, other sons of Sebastian, also joined Souths, for a year but, like John, Lawrence and Manny, played Colts or Reserves. It’s a Top End family tree with all the trimmings. Shake it and a Rioli falls out with boots on and ends up wearing the red and white of the Bulldogs at Fremantle Community Bank Oval. The Rioli-Bulldog connection has ebbed and flowed since 1972, starting first with Sebastian, known as Sibby, and stretching to 2020 when his son Ben played a hand in the club’s dramatic premiership success over Claremont.

Sibby was the first of the long line of Riolis, descendants of Cyril Snr and Helena, to play for the Bulldogs, and Ben was the 12th. In between there were some who went on to become household names, and others who came to play but eschewed the city lifestyle for the freedom of Melville Island, a piece of paradise 80km north of Darwin that the Rioli clan calls home. In 1971, family patriarch Cyril Rioli Snr and his young wife moved from the Darwin suburb of Rapid Creek to Melville Island, when his work as a crocodile hunter ended with the decision by the Northern Territory Government to protect the prehistoric reptiles. 

The man most responsible for establishing this footballing pipe-line from Melville Island to Fremantle is long-time Bulldogs official Richard Woodgate who moved to Darwin for four years in 1970 to take up work with the Australian National Audit Office. He continued to travel to Darwin annually until 1979 on work-related trips. Woodgate was also responsible for persuading other players to join Souths from Darwin, most notably 1980 Premiership player Wayne Delmenico, a former Melbourne Football Club player who played with North Darwin in the off season.

Woodgate had various roles with South Fremantle before taking up residence in Alawa, a suburb of Darwin not far from the Rapid Creek Road home of Cyril Snr and his wife Helena who were both children of the Stolen Generation. The Rioli name is taken from Sister Rioli, an Italian nun who arrived on Melville Island along with a Sister Vigona in the 1940s, when the custom of giving Indigenous children the surnames of Catholic nuns was established. The Rioli family’s heritage name is Tipakalippa, part of which was revived by Cyril Snr around 2006, 10 years before his death. He was then known as Cyril Kalippa while his wife Helena, a revered matriarch on Melville Island who passed away at the end of 2020, was referred to as Mrs Kalippa-Rioli.

Upon arriving in Darwin, Woodgate immediately became involved with the football community and formed a strong attachment with the fabled St Mary’s Football Club where he met Billie Roe a talented player, originally from Broome, who had a stint in the 1950s with East Perth. Woodgate, already St Mary’s treasurer, and Roe where spectators at the epic Northern Territory Football League’s grand final of 1971-72 when St Mary’s beat the Darwin Buffaloes by a point at Gardens Oval. For St Mary’s, a 17-year-old Sebastian Rioli was making the ball talk, baulking and feigning and conjuring deception and tricks associated more with a magician than a footballer. Nobody could lay a hand on him. 

“It was a pretty big step for a kid because Sibby didn’t know anybody (in Perth) but it turned out he had a fantastic personality and fitted in very well.” Previously Bill Dempsey, who moved from the Darwin Football Club to West Perth in 1960, and David Kantilla, from St Mary’s to South Adelaide in the same year, had been Darwin’s best-known football exports. Then, Sebastian helped create the celebrated link between South Fremantle and St Mary’s with Woodgate’s biggest prize, Maurice, moving to Perth in 1975 with the fearsome Basil Campbell, who according to Woodgate believes Sibby was the best of the Rioli clan. That view was shared by none other than Maurice himself!