Richmond have defended their signing of Chris Yarran, arguing potential mental health issues shouldn't mean an AFL player becomes unrecruitable.
Yarran left the club on Tuesday without playing a game for the Tigers.
The defender struggled with injury and mental illness this year after leaving Carlton at the end of the 2015 season.
Tigers football boss Neil Balme on Wednesday rejected any suggestions Yarran was a risky recruitment because of perceived concerns around his susceptibility to mental health problems.
"You can't say it was a bad decision because it didn't work out," Balme told SEN radio.
"Do you think then that, say, Sydney shouldn't have taken a risk on Lance Franklin? He's had some issues with mental health. Was it a good idea to do that or not? Clearly it was.
"Let's not talk about that. Let's just say, is it worth helping these young men and take a risk to help them to play the game they want to play? Surely it is.
"Sometimes they don't work out."
Yarran hired a personal coach and tried to rebuild his fitness over the last few weeks before training with the Tigers on Monday.
His agent Paul Connors said Yarran realised the following day he couldn't maintain an AFL workload for the whole year, instead returning home to Perth to be with his family.
"The demands and rigours of AFL, for him to do it day-in day-out, was just going to be too much," Connors told RSN radio.
"He knew he didn't want to put teammates through this for another year."
Yarran is not the only player to spend time away from the game due to mental health issues - the list includes recently delisted Geelong forward Mitch Clark and Fremantle's Cam McCarthy.
AFL operations manager Mark Evans admitted the league had failed to fully understand the "complex" issues around mental health of players.
"Some of those things I don't think we understand what it would be like for a player who has mental health issues who is then getting trolled pretty hard through social media," Evans told SEN.
Yarran played 119 AFL games with the Blues before being traded for draft pick No.19.
Balme said the Tigers would not stand in Yarran's way if he chose to play in the WAFL.
