Myrtleford product Guy Rigoni looks back at the Hawks and Demons

"We were playing our last game in 1997 and my brother (Chad) and I booked a room over in Albury as we were playing Lavington," he recalled.

"We won that and went out and celebrated with a few of the boys and then we had the best and fairest at Myrtleford the next day and I won it, so we're virtually stayed on until 'Mad Tuesday' and dad (Robert) rang up the pub and said, 'some bloke from Melbourne rang up and wants to know if you want a play a game on Saturday'.

"I was pretty full and I said, 'boys, what do you reckon'? They said, 'no worries', so I said, 'well, it looks like we're going to Melbourne for the weekend'.

The liquid diet seemed to work too because Rigoni kicked three goals and racked up 33 disposals in the Melbourne reserves' win against Richmond.

"Melbourne said at the time they wouldn't name me in the paper because they wanted to keep it on the down low," he offered.

A few months later, Rigoni re-entered the AFL arena at No.77 in the national draft.

"Look, I always thought I was good enough, but just thought I needed a little bit longer to develop," he said.

"When I got drafted to Hawthorn (in the 1993 pre-season draft at No.58) I'd only played 14 senior games at Myrtleford so I was pretty raw.

"My coach Martin Cross said, 'look, you're not ready to go', being a young bloke I thought, 'what do you know?' But he was spot on."

So the 18-year-old Hawthorn fan was suddenly training with some of the Hawks' biggest names, like Jason Dunstall and Dermott Brereton.

'I was blown away a little bit, but 'Dermy' was always really good to the young blokes and really helped us develop," he said.

But he wasn't always in awe of Dunstall.

"My first pre-season at Hawthorn we went on a training camp and we had teams where you had to carry a bloke on a stretcher for about four or five kilometres," he said.

"We had to alternate somebody on the stretcher and we were unlucky enough to get Jason Dunstall, he wasn't the fittest bloke.

"We ended up carrying him a long way, we almost dropped him that many times and everyone was swearing at him, telling him to lose weight (laughs)."

Rigoni didn't know it at the time, but the superstar forward had given him a glimpse of what he needed after 42 reserves games.

"Fitness was definitely the biggest one (area to improve)," he said.

"It was just the ability to repeat effort, I was always really fast, but I'd blow up really quick.

"I just had to get that stamina to play in the midfield because I was playing half-forward, half-back at Hawthorn, and couldn't get a look in, I played a little bit on the wing, but I didn't have a real big tank."

So Rigoni headed home to Myrtleford at the end of 1994 to become the fittest midfielder he could.

"They were a great bunch of guys to go back to, I played one year with my brother Chad, the only year we got to play together," he said.

"But after a few (three) years back in the Ovens and Murray, when I went back to Melbourne, I reckon I was ready."

The 22-year-old certainly faced a baptism of fire in his first pre-season game, marking Sydney Swans' Brownlow medallist Paul Kelly in Wellington, New Zealand.

"I matched him for possessions, but he kicked a couple of goals on me, it was just his strength, so I had a bit of a way to go to develop," he said.

But the poster boy for perseverance wasn't letting a second opportunity slip as he claimed the Demons' best first year player award in 1998.

Two years later, he was facing powerhouse Essendon on grand final day with 96,249 fans.

"It was a blur because the game was so disappointing (Essendon won by 60 points), I just remember the roar of the crowd after the national anthem, it was spine-tingling," he said.

That apart, Rigoni was flying before a seemingly innocuous gym session in the 2001 pre-season.

"I was doing leg work and lifted something a bit funny, I straight away felt something go, it gave me a bit of grief for a week or two and then it came good," he said.

"Then I was at training one day and a guy kicked the ball at my toes and I went down to pick it up, it was like someone had shot me."

He missed 18 months of football.

"Mate, it was horrible, my wife (Trudy) was having to put my socks on because I couldn't touch me feet," he said.

"They (medical staff) told me straight away I needed an operation and I was only 25, 26 and I said, 'you're not touching my back'.

"I tried for about six months, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, you name it, but in the end one of the specialists said if you don't have the nerve released, you'll have that pain forever.

"They shaved the disc and it was a success."

He was delisted after 2002, but was re-drafted by the Demons in the pre-season draft for 2003, spending another three years there.

"It limited my speed and my kicking, I probably lost five to 10 metres," he said.

"(Coach) Neale (Daniher) was trying to get me on the wing a bit more because of my kicking, I learnt how to cheat, as a winger you don't want to get sucked to the ball, you want to be a release player, so that was hard as I used to go and hunt the footy, I had to learn to be smarter.

"Neale was fantastic, he knew how to push my buttons, sometimes he used to frustrate me, I'd come back to training and he'd say, 'you're looking a bit fat', but he was just knew what to say to get the best out of me."

After snaring three straight premierships with Sandringham in the VFL (2004-06), Rigoni retired at 31, joining William Adams, which supplies Caterpillar equipment to industries.

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"I actually started part-time with them in my last year at Melbourne, I did one day a week for 12 months and then they offered me a full time job," he said.

The Melbourne-based account manager and Trudy have two children, Jemma, 16, and Paige, 12, but he retains his love for Myrtleford and is desperate to see the club snap its 50-year premiership drought.