Richmond’s general manager of football Neil Balme has shared the latest on what he has heard about Chris Yarran’s return and the reasons why the club decided to part ways with star veteran Brett Deledio.
Balme says that Yarran, who has not played a single game for Richmond after being brought to the club in last year’s AFL Trade Period due to injuries and mental health issues, has secretly returned to training but is still a way off from playing senior football again.
“He’s training at the moment, he’s (in Melbourne)…he’s not officially back,” Balme said on SEN’s Hungry for Sport.
“He’s got a fair bit of work to do and we’re hopeful it can work itself out.”
The former Richmond player says that he is uncertain of whether Yarran’s current training is either physical or mental, but expects it would combine both.
“I think it would be a bit of both…I honestly don’t know, I don’t have a report on it, no so I’d be guessing at this stage,” said Balme.
The Tigers GM of Football also went into detail how the Brett Deledio trade to the GWS Giants was carried out by the club.
“He said with all these other things going on, he wants to be reinvigorated and would like an opportunity somewhere else,” said Balme.
“At first he spoke with Geelong and obviously for different reasons they weren’t able to do it themselves to make all these things happen.
“Then GWS got involved which was out of the blue for us but they came to us and obviously went to him and said we could make something happen.
“Earlier on we heard the Bulldogs but they claimed they had no interest and then all of a sudden they did which was a bit unusual but that’s what happened.
“Then it was up to him to decide kind of what he wanted to do…we were happy to help him in some way with what he wanted to do and when he said I’m keen to have a look at the GWS thing, once there was a reasonable deal to be done it could be done.”
Balme says that Richmond could have told other clubs that they would not trade Deledio and he would have then expected the 29-year-old to be a committed Tiger, but decided it was best to let him move.
“To be fair to Brett, he always said he was happy to play on, he’s happy for his contract to be his contract. It wouldn’t have been a problem getting him to buy in I think,” he said.
“We were confident that if we were to insist he would have still been a valuable player for us and been happy to play.
“Should we have been hard on it and say you have a contract and that’s it? Or do we listen to what a player says? I think one of the things in today’s footy which hasn’t changed since 1858, you’ve got to have guys that really want to play for you and when a player says they want to go, obviously you have to take that into account by some degree.”
Click here to view Chris Yarran's SEN Inside Football Player Ratings.
Click here to view Brett Deledio's SEN Inside Football Player Ratings.