Richmond senior club advisor Neil Balme expects interim coach Andrew McQualter to succeed in his new role at the Tigers.
McQualter stepped into the top job at Richmond on Tuesday following Damien Hardwick’s decision to resign as head coach, with the 36-year-old to take the reins for the rest of the 2023 season.
After a 94-game career with St Kilda and Gold Coast, McQualter joined Richmond in 2014 as a development coach before joining Hardwick’s group of assists in 2017.
Having spent five and a half years as one of Hardwick’s understudies McQualter is well-acquiped for the role and Balme was asked by SEN’s Dwayne Russell about what we should expect from the man they call ‘Mini’ in his new job.
“He's not that dissimilar in some ways to Craig McRae,” Balme told SEN Afternoons.
“He's certainly a bit understated, quite humble, but he really knows his footy, he’s really bright about his footy.
“He’s a good people manager, gets on well with people, doesn't take himself too seriously, but really understands the game well.
“He's genuinely got the qualities to be a damn good senior coach.
“We'll give him the opportunity to see what he does with this group and then we'll make those decisions later on.
“He's in a great spot really with the fact that we've given him the opportunity to do this.
“He gets on well with the players, they understand him and we're going to keep coaching the same way in a sense that ‘Dimma’ did so he doesn't have to all of a sudden come up with a whole new plan, which would be hard at this time of the year.
“He is in a good spot, so it'll be interesting to see how he goes.”
While Balme says any of Richmond’s assistants could have viably taken the role on an interim basis, he says the decision to pick McQualter came as the club felt he deserved a chance at a head role with the likes of fellow assistants David Teague and Ben Rutten already having experience as senior coaches.
“It honestly wouldn't have mattered (who we picked),” Balme explained.
“We've got so many good (assistants), all of our coaches could have done it.
“But you just got to say, ‘Well, what are we going to do? Let's have a look at it’, and we thought it was worth just giving him the opportunity.
“That in itself is important to him, but it's probably not important to us and that’s because all the other blokes could have done it.
“’Clarkey’ (Xavier Clarke), he presents well, they all do their bit, they're all great line coaches in their own right.
“It could have been any one of them, but it was just a feeling across the board that, oh, let's give 'Mini' a chance.
“We genuinely think that he's a really competent coach.”
McQualter’s first game in charge comes when Richmond hosts Port Adelaide at the MCG on Sunday afternoon.