Tigers’ Balta available for AFL selection: coach
Anna Harrington |
An AFL return looms for Noah Balta against Gold Coast after coach Adem Yze declared the defender available and said he has been “punished enough” by Richmond over his assault case.
Balta has pleaded guilty to assault and will be sentenced in court on April 22, just three days after his potential AFL return against Gold Coast at Marvel Stadium on Saturday.
He served a four-match ban over December’s incident and returned to play via a VFL practice match on Sunday.
Yze was unwilling to confirm Balta’s inclusion ahead of Richmond’s main training session, where he trained normally, but declared him available.
“He’s available to play this weekend,” Yze said on Wednesday.
“So he got through what he needed to get through.
“He’ll get through training today, and then as a match committee we’ll go through that later today.
“Unless Dimma (Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick) is happy to tell us who’s playing for Gold Coast this weekend, I’m not going to divulge who we’re going to put in our team today before we go through selection, before we need to.”
The optics of Balta, 25, returning to the field while awaiting his sentence have been queried.
“I understand there’s opinions, but right now he’s served his suspension,” Yze said.
“We went really hard with doing so, and he’s been dealing with that for three months.
“He missed another game of footy so we’ve suspended him for four, and now he’s had five weeks out.
“We’ve got to just make sure that we’re looking after the player as well.
“As I said all along, that’s been a discussion we had with the AFL at the start of this whole process.
“He’s been working on himself and he can’t wait to get out and repay or try to earn the respect back of not only us as a club and his teammates, but it’s around our supporters and the AFL community. So he’s got to do that at some stage.”
When asked if Balta pleading guilty changed anything from Richmond’s perspective, Yze said: “No, not at all.
“He pleaded guilty by the fact that he told us what happened, and that’s why we went really hard.
“We’ve got young players at our club right now and on our list that needed to understand that it was wrong, what he did, and that’s why we went really hard.
“Right now, he served that sentence, and he’s getting ready to play, and now it’s around performance.”
When pressed on Balta’s sanction, Yze was keen to “move on” from the key defender.
“We’ve made that decision as a footy club – we’ve already punished him, we don’t want to keep punishing him,” he said.
“So if we decide to play him this weekend, that’s everyone else’s opinion, not ours.”
When asked if Richmond’s steadfast support of Balta had been worth it, given the scrutiny, Yze said: “Yep.
“He’s a Richmond man, and as I said, we’ve punished him enough.”
Richmond are optimistic prized draftee Sam Lalor (hip) will return against Gold Coast while Tom Lynch is fit to play after he was rested late against Fremantle.
AAP
