Richmond senior club advisor Neil Balme has paid tribute to Damien Hardwick for equalling Tommy Hafey’s coaching games at Tigerland in last Saturday’s final 2020 home-and-away round clash with Adelaide at Adelaide Oval.

Hardwick drew level with Hafey on 248 games as the Tigers’ coach and will surpass that in Friday week’s qualifying final against Brisbane at the Gabba.

Balme, who played most of his football at Richmond with Hafey at the helm, is in a unique position to make comparisons between the two Tiger multi-premiership coaches.

“For those of us who played under Tommy you realise what a marvel that he was, and for someone to be able to coach as many games as Tommy . . . it’s a great thing. I’m sure Damien will be very proud of what he’s done,” Balme said on Richmond’s podcast Talking Tigers.

“Coaching’s very much about week by week, what your players do, and how you work with your players. He’s still very engaged and very much in charge of what he’s doing, but he also empowers his assistant coaches so well . . .

“And he doesn’t have a lot of blame.

“A lot of old coaches, if it didn’t work well, they’d give you a big payout and hope you’d respond to it. If that has to happen, well, he’ll do it, but it’s very rare that happens.

“It’s always encouragement, what can we do better. Let’s learn from our mistakes and get better from them, rather than shaming you or whatever.

“He’s very much a players’ coach . . . and he knows how to encourage that.

“Very pleased that he’s going to make that milestone.”

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