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Sport Nation
Why key footy figures believe Richmond mishandled the Balta situation
Andrew Slevison • April 24th, 2025 11:32 am
Richmond needed to wheel out somebody in a senior position to address the Noah Balta sentencing.
That is the opinion of key footy identities Gerard Whateley, Garry Lyon and Tim Watson who all agree that the Tigers missed a trick in not dedicating someone to specifically answer Balta-related questions.
Wednesday’s press conference was somewhat prickly when senior coach Adem Yze asked reporters to move on after several questions relating to the curfew, before media manager Nicki Malady stepped in and asked for no more Balta questions.
That ‘tense’ situation could have been avoided entirely if the Tigers had CEO Shane Dunne or president John O’Rourke on hand to protect Yze from the Balta barrage.
Whateley pondered the situation and how the Tigers may have mishandled it.
“So today's the day that you front up and answer every question, and it's not with the senior coach,” Whateley said on Fox Footy’s AFL 360 on Wednesday night.
“There's a level of questioning that's inappropriate for the senior coach to deal with. That's for the chief executive or the president.
“So that was the starting point of today. Come and field all the questions. It's not the footy media who's assembled, it's the news media.
“You have to have an awareness that this is leading the news, not just the sports bulletins at the moment.”
Watson feels that the extra media throng present at Punt Road were there to find out more about the Balta sentencing and the Tigers should have accommodated.
“The interest in this was way beyond just the football media people,” Watson said on SEN Breakfast.
“The Richmond Football Club know those people, they see those faces that turn up every week to the media conferences, they would know.
“And when they looked out yesterday, they would've thought, OK, well, there are a lot of people here that aren't here normally for just a football type interview, and I think they just misread the situation.
“All those questions that people wanted to ask, they should have been answered. I felt for Adem Yze yesterday standing up there trying to answer all those questions, because as it was rightly pointed out that he's here to talk about footy matters, which he was, and any football question can be directed at him, but the Noah Balta story sort of extended beyond the boundary of football and into another sphere, because so many people had bought into it.
“Politicians and people right around the country had bought into it, and therefore I think it was incumbent upon somebody at a higher level in the football club to be able to answer those questions.”
Additionally, Lyon also believes a senior figure should have been present to deal with the media after Yze handled the footy side of things.
“I would imagine if they had their time again, if that was today, that they would do exactly as has been suggested there, and that would have been a pretty easy fix,” said Lyon.
“Here's Adem, there he is, ask him the footy questions, and the certainly one or two about Noah, because he's not going to be in the team, how does that impact, blah, blah, blah.
“And then he's going to go because he's got a game to coach tomorrow night, and here’s Shane Dunne, the CEO, go for as long as you want.
“That was Gerard’s take and we agree with it as well.”
The Tigers take on Melbourne in the Anzac Eve clash at the MCG on Thursday night.
Balta is unavailable due to his 10pm curfew, but will be back for the Round 8 clash with Hawthorn.
