Mark Riley (Australian rules coach)

Mark Riley (born 10 October 1963) is an Australian rules football coach, who spent over 25 years coaching at WAFL and AFL level. He is a level 3 accreditted coach and highly regarded for his connection to and development of players. Post his retirement from AFL in 2015 Riley continued to coach at amateur level but retired completely from coaching at the end of 2019 season . He acted briefly as the caretaker coach of the Melbourne Football Club in 2007[1] and was formerly an assistant coach with the Fremantle and Carlton Football Clubs and the Gold Coast Suns.

Mark Riley
Personal information
Full name	Mark Riley
Date of birth	(1963-10-10) 10 October 1963
Place of birth	Perth, Western Australia
Coaching career
Years	Club	Games (W–L–D)
2007	Melbourne	9 (3–6–0)
Career highlights
Coached 9 games AFL and 400+games as an AFL assistant coach. 2001 JJ Leonard Trophy for WAFL coach of the year. 2009 AFLCA Assistant coach of the year.

As a player Riley played for Claremont in the WAFL. He also played A Grade District cricket for West Perth and Willeton and was selected for the powerful Western Australian state cricket squad in the early 80's. Riley a trained school teacher, taught in small rural towns including Hyden, Narrogin and Kellerberrin. At Kellerberrin he coached Gerard Neesham and built up a friendship that would later see Riley take over from Neesham as coach of Claremont when Neesham was appointed coach of the newly formed Fremantle Football Club in mid-1994. Riley would lead Claremont to the 1994 WAFL Grand Final, but they lost to East Fremantle.[2]

He then joined Fremantle on its entry into the AFL in 1995 and was the club's development coach from 1995–97 and assistant coach from 1998-2000. 2001 and 2002 saw him return to Claremont as senior coach where he was awarded the JJ Leonard Western Australian Football Coach of the Year award in 2002 before he joined Neale Daniher, who was also an assistant coach at Fremantle under Neesham, at Melbourne in 2003 as an assistant coach. When Daniher resigned in the middle of the 2007 season, Riley was appointed the caretaker coach of Melbourne for the remainder of the 2007 season from Round 14 onward. Melbourne won three of the nine games he coached to finish 14th. Riley was interviewed for the Senior position at the Dees but was unsuccessful and the position was filled by Dean Bailey. He then chose to move to the Carlton Football Club in 2008 as an assistant coach, under Brett Ratten mainly focusing on the Blues' midfield. At the end of 2009, Riley was presented with the AFL Coaches Association Assistant Coach of the Year after doing a fine job with the Carlton midfielders. Riley and Ratten have become very close and that period at Carlton has been to clubs most successful in the last 2 decades.

In 2012, Riley's position as assistant coach of Carlton was made redundant. The decisions that Carlton made during that period would prove to be disastrous and arguably they are still recovering.[3] Shortly after leaving the Blues, he joined Gold Coast as an assistant coach with Guy McKenna. The Gold Coast won 8 and 10 games in Riley's 2 years at the club, the most successful 2 years since they joined the AFL.

In October 2015 Riley exited the AFL and joined the Clontarf Foundation in a full time capacity working in government and corporate affairs. The Clontarf Foundation uses sport and positive male role models to attract indigenous boys to school, keep them at school and then transition them to employment or further study. Clonarf Foundation has grown from 1 academy in WA in the year 2000, with 25 boys to now operate with 120 Academies and over 8000 indigenous boys in full-time education programs in every mainland state.