OX’S HEART-BALME: WHY WE LOVE NEIL
HEART-BALME: Why we love Neil, and why he might just be ...
WHEN the Tigers hit town on Saturday they will bring with them a man who has changed football clubs, and should be applauded for altering theirs.
He’s not a player, well, he was once.
He’s not a coach, well, he was once.
He’s a man who brings people together and creates a club mentality.
His name is Neil Balme and he needs to be credited with the transformation seen at Punt Road this year.
Richmond won’t finish ninth this year. They may finish second, and the attributes Balme brought with him have been directly reflected in the success so far in season 2017.
Last year, the Tigers were hit with a forceful group intent on shaking up the place.
For all the failures the Focus On Footy collective suffered, their big victory was identifying Balme as the person who needed to return and with him restored a sense of surety and calm.
Something we often forget is that footballers aren’t robots. They’re humans. Everyone is wired differently, has different skills and requires different motivations.
This is something Balme understands.
Some in this new breed of coaches are too rigid in their ideal footballer model.
Balme is a bit more inclus- ive and it has served him very well.
During his successful time as Geelong’s football operations boss, he managed the personalities of rascals like Cam Mooney and Stevie J, along with the fastidiousness of Gary Ablett Jnr and Tom Harley.
I remember when he walked in to coach Melbourne in 1993.
Here was this big bloke, huge laugh, enveloping arms, desire to succeed and incredible ability to get the best out of the group.
He was a father figure to me, and most of my teammates. We could talk to Balmey about our game, our worries, our love life, or our golf score. Anything.
At the Demons he managed some mighty players too. Allen Jakovich — what a legend, but he would rather have been somewhere else. Balmey got what he could out of him.
He had to make sure Alistair Clarkson, Jeff Farmer, Jim Stynes, Glenn Lovett and Sean Charles were performing at their best.
And don’t forget, this was a tumultuous time for the red and the blue off the field. Balme was smack bang in the middle of the merger debate.
He had to front up, assure the players that we’d be OK, not knowing what the future would look like.
Balme was amazing for us during this time. He didn’t sugar coat anything, he understood that we were adults and we needed to hear the truth. We all trusted him. I’ve admired his work behind the scenes at Geelong, and now at Richmond.
I often wonder how Nathan Buckley would be going this year if Balme was still beside him offering guidance.
Collingwood’s loss has definitely been Richmond’s gain.
The talk is now starting that Richmond will become a “destination” club, just like Hawthorn.
That impression from outsiders comes from a stable exterior projected from a stable interior. There were no wholesale changes of the field last year, but some new players came on board.
It would be ridiculous to suggest the inclusion of Dion Prestia is like the same as when Patrick Dangerfield joined Geelong and had immediate impact. Prestia is good, but Danger is great.
With Prestia, and Josh Caddy and the other newbies to Tigerland, they have brought freshness, but the whole club was revitalised by Balme.
We could be sitting back in October and analysing the best recruits of the year. For mine, the biggest and the best has been Balme to Richmond.