Neil Balme and Adem Yze go way back.
The new Richmond head coach was drafted by the current senior club advisor when Balme was the head coach at Melbourne in 1994.
At the time, Yze was a quite and unassuming kid with lovely skills who according to Balme didn’t appear destined for the coaching caper.
Fast forward to 2023 and Yze is the man the Tigers hired over interim coach Andrew McQualter after an exhaustive process to replace three-time premiership coach Damien Hardwick.
Balme says it has been great to see the evolution of Yze over the years.
“He’s really impressed me,” Balme said on SEN’s Whateley.
“I coached him when he was a kid, we drafted him.
“I look back at him and he was so quiet and kept to himself. A beautiful player, not difficult to deal with at all, but you wouldn’t say then that he’s going to be a coach because he was fairly quiet, but he was intelligent.
“You can see he’s come through the system and just grown. They way he presents and how engaging he is, it’s magnificent.”
Balme provided some insight into how the club came to the conclusion that they would select Yze over McQualter.
“We can’t wait. We went through quite a significant process,” he added.
“These are the sort of values and qualities he’s got to have, so we did that fairly deeply, so he’s what we need.
“It was quite challenging. Andrew McQualter did really well for us and we took him very seriously, but in a funny way a new voice was important to us at this stage.
“We think ‘Mini’ will be a senior coach one day, for sure. He’s just got wonderful qualities.
“We also knew that he’d have three or four clubs interested in putting him on, so it won’t be bad for him and his development as well.
“He’d been with us for quite a long time so he wasn’t a new voice.”
Balme also outlined the main challenge that Yze faces following the successful Hardwick reign.
The club feels there is enough talent within the developing ranks, but Yze and his coaching staff simply need to work out where they are best suited position-wise.
“The challenge in a lot of ways is to look at our list and say, ‘what is it?’,” he added.
“We’ve got quite a few settled players. With a couple of our champion older blokes going, it makes an opportunity to play the next lot.
“We look at it and we see a dozen or so kids that we’ve really hardly played and we really think can play. We could be kidding ourselves because they haven’t actually done it, but certainly a reasonable percentage of them will.
“That’s his challenge, to figure that out, who’s next in, where do they play, relate it to what positions are available, et cetera et cetera, and if you can get them to buy in.
“Most teams play similarly but he’ll come in with his own extra ideas which will give us a chance to be even better than we are. That’s what he’ll bring and the challenge is to make sure he connects well enough.
“The way he is, he’s going to, there’s no doubt. If players don’t like the way he behaves I’ll be really surprised.”
Furthermore, Balme is more bullish on the current situation at the club as opposed to a lot of the commentary being directed at the state of the list and a potential rebuild.
“At first I was thinking we’ll take a while to rebuild, but I don’t think we will,” he concluded.
“I think we’re in a pretty good place, but I’m the world’s greater optimist so it’s probably not reasonable.
“But I reckon we’ll be a real challenge, I’ve got no doubt.”
With Yze now at the helm, the Tigers will head into season 2024 with a brand new head coach for the first time since 2010.