“WE’RE PRETTY CONFIDENT”: BALME MAINTAINING POSITIVE STANCE ON RICHMOND PAIR BAKER AND MARTINBy Andrew Slevison
SEN
17 July 2024Neil Balme says Richmond is remaining “pretty confident” that both Liam Baker and Dustin Martin will not move elsewhere this trade period.
While Balme does admit there is a chance the out-of-contract Baker does return home to Western Australia with either Fremantle or West Coast, the club’s senior advisor is staying positive.
The Tigers have been quite good at retaining key players over the course of the last five or so seasons and Balme expects that to be the case again, even if he does acknowledge that movement between clubs has become more slanted towards the players in recent times.
“We’re much more aware of the needs of the players than we used to be,” Balme said on SEN’s Sportsday SA.
“We used to just say, ‘sit down and shut up, you’re ours, do what we tell you’. But I think we take them into account more, so there’s always more chance of that happening (players leaving).
“I think we’ve got a pretty good environment. It would be pretty unusual for our blokes to leave.
“When you’ve got a Liam Baker for example, he is from WA. He’s one of the few blokes when I say, ‘where are you going to live?’, he says, ‘I’m going to go and live back in Lake Grace one day’ - that doesn’t happen that often.
“Obviously there’s a big draw for him to go back. We’re pretty confident that he won’t go, but he could well do. If he does then we’ll just have to deal with it.”
Veteran Martin, who also comes out of contract this year, continues to be linked with the Gold Coast Suns while other names like Shai Bolton and Daniel Rioli are also being thrown around in trade circles.
But Balme feels the environment at Punt Road under first-year coach Adem Yze is strong enough to keep their senior core together as they continue to bring through emerging youngsters.
“You hear a fair bit about the others. I don’t think there’s a lot of reality in that,” he added.
“As you see in today’s footy, if someone offers you a decent enough deal then you’ll consider anything I suppose.
“We’re not expecting that to happen. We’re working to make sure we retain our guys.”
As for Martin specifically, Balme cannot see the Richmond champion running around in other colours in 2025 if he opts not to retire by playing on.
He can’t see Martin being the face of the Suns due to the fact that he does not enjoy the media limelight.
“Every second week there’s a Dusty story that he’s going somewhere, but I’m very confident that if he plays he’ll keep playing for us,” Balme continued.
“It would also be probably wrong for another club to recruit him because he’s not at the stage where he’s going to be his best and he’s not ever going to be the bloke who stands up and does all the media for you either.
“That’s the challenge of being a strong club is that there is a chance you could lose your players at some stage.
“But we’re pretty confident that won’t happen.”
https://www.sen.com.au/news/2024/07/15/were-pretty-confident-balme-maintaining-positive-stance-on-richmond-pair/
