Tennis Australia Boss Finally Breaks His Silence Over The Novak Djokovic Scandal

The boss of Tennis Australia has finally broken his silence on the Novak Djokovic scandal and revealed how such a blunder happened.

Last week it was revealed the world number one tennis star was granted a medical exemption to come Down Under and play in the Australian Open.

However, when the Serbian player arrived into Melbourne he was detained and questioned for several hours about his medical exemption and reportedly was asked to prove it was legit.

Australian Border Force eventually cancelled his visa and Novak was transported to a Melbourne hotel while his team appealed the decision.

Everyone has been wondering why Novak would have been allowed to fly all the way to Australia just to get turned away at the 11th hour and Craig Tiley has offered an insight into what was happened before Djokovic jumped on that plane.

The Tennis Australia chief told Nine News Melbourne that 'we constantly were seeking clarity from day one to ensure that one, we did the right thing and two, that we able to bring the players into the country'.

He added that the state or territory would be in charge of offering medical exemptions to people coming into the country and was not at the discretion of Australian Border Force, which is a national authority.

Mr Tiley said: "Remember, from the beginning we were saying the condition you can be assured to come into Australia was to meet the requirements of certain vaccines that were valid in Australia and get vaccinated with those vaccines.

"There's always going to be a handful of people, as it would be when people normally come into Australia, not tennis, that require for medical reason exemptions.

"We worked closely with the Victorian Government to ensure there were two panels, two processes ... that only a small handful of people had to go through to in order they were exempt and that was done through the State Government."

He said he won't be pointing the finger at any one to blame for the stuff up in 'contradictory information'.

"All I can say is that was primarily because there was so much conflict of information the whole time," he added.

"Every single week we were talking to Home Affairs, we were talking to all parts of Government to ensure that we were doing the right thing and [following] the right processes, one is exemptions, but knowing also that everyone coming in had to be vaccinated."

Craig said he would love to see Novak given the chance to stay in Australia and defend his Grand Slam title.

Featured Image Credit: Alamy

Topics: Novak Djokovic, Australia