THE swift and clinical removal from Moorabbin of Nick Riewoldt’s greatest football mentor, close friend and former coach hurt and then hardened St Kilda’s most recognisable and important player.

Grant Thomas is not a name Riewoldt feels obliged to whisper when in the confines of his club.

Indeed, on the morning of his fi rst game this season, it was Thomas who a nervy Riewoldt turned to for a calming chat over tea and toast. It was something Riewoldt had discussed expressly with his new coach, Ross Lyon, a man the blond forward says he is still getting to know.

And as long as Lyon had no problem with that — or the continuing relationship between the star player and the former coach — everyone else, to use Riewoldt’s words, could "get stuffed".

"Thommo knows what frame of mind I need to be in to play well and I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks. So I was just at a loose end that morning and I just went round there," Riewoldt said this week.

"I don’t know, it just sort of helped me focus on what I need to focus on to play a good game. I was pretty nervous and he helped me calm my nerves a little bit.

"I just can’t understand the big deal. I’d spoken to Ross before it, just about my general contact with Thommo, and if Ross doesn’t have a problem with it, then everyone else can go and get stuffed as far as I’m concerned.

"I’ve had contact with Thommo since then (the fi rst game) and I’m mates with his children as well. So there’s always going to be that contact, but it’s not contact revolved around football necessarily, it’s just more related to friendship."

It’s eight months since the old coaching team at St Kilda was ejected and replaced by the new. Two days out from a roundeight game, the Moorabbin clubrooms are quiet.

It’s Thursday lunchtime. Riewoldt is a relaxed and willing interview subject. He is sitting on a faded floral couch that would be better suited to a granny flat but that now helps fill a room where chairman’s lunches were once held.

These days, it’s a kick-back space for the players, with a billiards table and jumbo-sized television. There are laminated pictures of the Saints’ training camps in South Africa and London on the walls.

They’re recent photographs that look old because there are people in them who are no longer in the inner sanctum. It can be no coincidence, in the aftermath of what he describes as a "hugely emotional period", that Riewoldt, 24, has been contemplating his own football mortality.

"Subconsciously, it might have had a bit of a hardening effect. The realities are that it is a very brutal, fi ckle industry and everyone’s expendable, whether it be players, coaches or whatever it is.

"It’s just sort of dawned on me the last few weeks that I’m probably halfway through my career. If you play 12 years this day and age in the game, you’ve done pretty well, and I’m into my seventh now.

"Even last year, I sort of felt like I was still one of the younger guys and it’s a bit different this year. There are guys here who are younger than my little sister.

"Even just after games, like the way my body’s just pulling up, this is the fi rst year I actually haven’t felt young in the game. I’m sure it’s got something to do with the fact that I didn’t have that good a pre-season towards the end, not playing any lead-up games. But just even the way my muscles are feeling after games, I’m a lot more sore than I was last year or the year before."

Life, of course, has rolled on since the dinner at Melbourne Park where Riewoldt fought back tears when accepting his third club champion award and acknowledging, in an impromptu speech, the coach who had been a father figure for him.

Thomas was not there to hear it, having been sacked four days after the Saints lost their elimination fi nal to Melbourne, their sixth September outing in three years.

"I seemed to be the player that was always in the centre of things, which was a little bit frustrating because a lot of players voiced their anger and disbelief during that period," Riewoldt says.

"But it’s six months on now and I try not to go back and think about it too much. "And again, I’m conscious of not saying anything that’s going to have people jumping up and down. So that’s now an issue that I’ve got my own feelings about and I’m probably not going to share that with too many people."

While visibly thinking before he opens his mouth, Riewoldt does not seem hesitant about anything he says. Not once during 40-odd minutes does he even move uncomfortably and, by the time he has to leave for an all in press conference, his right leg is fully extended along that old, flowery couch.

When he talks about his new senior coach, his third, there’s no forced gushiness, just a clear respect. "Ross has been fantastic," he says. "He’s been really understanding, not just of me, but of the whole playing group and the situation that we’ve been in and we’ve come from."

Riewoldt remembers clearly his fi rst one-on-one with Lyon, who he’d heard of but knew little about when the coach was appointed.

Riewoldt had declined an invitation to Ireland to play the international rules series and, before pre-season training started, he and Lyon began their familiarisation process over lunch at a Brighton cafe.

"There was something funny that happened," Riewoldt recalls, grinning. "A car came driving past and these young blokes were hanging out the window and just letting me have it with an absolute tirade of abuse. Like yelling at me out of the car calling me a f---ing cry-baby.

"It was like Ross wanted to pick up his bottle and just throw it at the car. He got really defensive and just sort of almost couldn’t believe it and he said, ‘I’ve been out of Melbourne for three or four years and you don’t really realise how passionate people are about footy down here’. That was pretty funny."

And, one assumes, quite impressive. "I think, just, he’s very to the point. He doesn’t say anything unless it’s absolutely necessary to say it. I suppose that’s a good way to sum it up," Riewoldt says.

"He's very honest and he said to me that he wasn't really coming in with any preconceptions … he said that he also came with a lot of respect for the playing group with what we'd been able to achieve over a period of time as well. As a bloke, though, I feel like I'm still getting to know him."

Apart from the increased number of meetings that drill into the players their roles and responsibilities, Riewoldt says there are no glaring differences in the daily goings-on at the club this year. On-field, though, everything is more structured.

"I'm not sure whether it's so much thinking differently … it's just within the game, there's less left up to the actual player themselves," Riewoldt said. "There's less decisions to be made out on the ground because you know this is where you've got to be. And for lots of different situations, whether it be for a stoppage here or a kick-out, everyone's got a set spot where they're supposed to be …"

Riewoldt, as a co-captain, is being asked to be an enforcer of the disciplines he and his teammates are learning.

"It's sort of like the casino — you might lose a couple along the way, but you're always going to have the best odds and you're always going to come out on top. So if we just stay disciplined, things will work for us. I've got full confidence in what they're trying to achieve."

The manner in which St Kilda defeated Sydney last weekend, and the club's staving off and eventual snuffing out of a resurgent Carlton the week before, were "huge" victories in the scheme of things.

An even bigger win for the club would be getting Riewoldt to sign a fresh deal. The present contract talks are the only off-limits topic because Riewoldt, like Chris Judd, wants to limit, as best he can, the extent to which such matters are aired in public.

Brisbane Lions players, around the time of that club's great successes, famously took pay cuts to keep the group together. At St Kilda, Riewoldt says: "I think we probably went through that two years ago where a lot of us were all coming out of contract … nothing was actually spoken about, but I think subconsciously, or consciously, no one wanted to be the one that was going to leave.

"We are a tight group, no doubt. We have gone through a fair bit together and there's a really strong core of players that … know each other really well and know what makes each other tick."

Those overseas training trips helped form a bond within the group that Riewoldt says is a Thomas legacy.

A purely intuitive reading is that Riewoldt is going nowhere.

Picturing himself as a retired footballer in 10 years' time, Riewoldt agrees that a side boasting surnames such as Koschitzke, Ball and Dal Santo would have underachieved if it did not win a flag.

"No doubt, and we've played in two preliminary finals, so we could have had one or two already, but we haven't. But I think what we've been able to achieve over the past three or four years with the list that we've had and the injury list that we've had has been a really good effort on behalf of everyone that's been here.

"I'm just as desperate as everyone else is, and I want to be mates with Robert Harvey in 10 years' time and be able to ring him up. If we play in a premiership, that will definitely happen."

Sharing the captain's job with Lenny Hayes and Luke Ball already has proved "beneficial for three of us and therefore been better for the team", Riewoldt says — even if the set-up, which Riewoldt believes will continue indefinitely, means he won't become a leader in the way that James Hird, Stephen Kernahan or Michael Voss did.

Citing a growth in his maturity, Riewoldt says he is considerably better equipped to handle the leadership position than he was in 2005 when he did it solo. At times, starting with a bruising round one, he found that season intensely painful. Just as he found the end of last year. He spoke of how it made him a better teammate, which made him a better footballer. And, perhaps most significantly, a wiser and stronger man.