Richmond coach Adem Yze has publicly urged veteran forward Tom Lynch to extend his career for at least another season, expressing confidence that the soon-to-be 34-year-old still has plenty to offer on the field.
Yze backs Lynch for another year
Lynch, who comes out of contract at the end of the current season, has been backed by his coach to continue playing. “No doubt,” Yze told reporters on Friday when asked if Lynch had more footy left in him. “Those discussions will happen at the end of the year. But his form when he plays and the ripple effect of when he plays, with our really young forward line ... I will be pushing for the fact that what he brings on and off the field, no doubt he has got some footy left in him, for sure.”
Lynch returned to the Tigers’ lineup for their Saturday night MCG fixture against a resurgent Carlton after recovering from a fractured larynx sustained in Round 11. Yze emphasised the cautious approach taken with Lynch’s recovery. “We were never going to take any risk with him or push it any harder, irrelevant of what we’re going through (on-field),” he said.
Richmond’s pursuit of Zak Butters
While Yze seeks to secure Lynch’s future, he has been batting away queries surrounding Richmond’s pursuit of Port Adelaide’s acting captain Zak Butters. Butters is weighing multimillion dollar offers from the Tigers, Western Bulldogs, and Geelong among others. “I can’t think about things like that,” Yze replied when asked about the chase for Butters. “It’s amazing, he has been in terrific form while this is all happening so you watch it and marvel at the type of player he is. But that’s the landscape we live in, there’s a lot of players right now that are out of contract. We went through it with Liam Baker a couple of years ago, so in the end he (Butters) will make his decision. We have got to plan around beating Carlton this weekend.”
Tigers eye mature talent
Yze indicated that Richmond is preparing to hit the market for mature talent in the near future. “Whether we bring players in this year or next, we will start to think about that to add to our list that we have got right now,” he said.
