Tennis fans have called out Darren Cahill's comments defending Simona Halep in light of her four-year suspension for anti-doping violations.

Former World No. 1 Halep was provisionally suspended last October after she tested positive for the banned substance roxadustat. She was then hit with a second doping charge in May of this year due to irregularities in her biological passport.

After multiple delays, the verdict was given and Halep was banned from the sport for four years. The Romanian player maintained that she was innocent and said she was 'shocked and disappointed' by the decision.

Cahill, who was a longtime coach of Halep, has vehemently defended her throughout the process and in the aftermath of the verdict. On September 20, he urged a fan page called 'Romanian Tennis' on X, formerly known as Twitter, to keep supporting Halep. This came after the page, which promotes Romanian tennis players, initially released a statement doubting the 31-year-old before later retracting their comments.

"keep the faith young fella. Simona didn’t do any of what’s been suggested in that report. CAS has always been the proper place to hear this case. Keep up the great work," Cahill commented.

However, some tennis fans took issue with the fact that Cahill was still defending his former protegé in the wake of the guilty verdict against her.

"I'm starting to get a bit sick of this. Literally no one has an agenda towards Halep or wants her to be banned for doping. You would think a coach who claims to love the sport would want it to be clean and wouldn't spend his time trying to defame the sport's drug testing body," wrote one.

"I rly wonder what the big names in tennis so openly backing Halep and outright claiming the report is a lie will do if/when CAS doesn’t overturn the verdict. What does Cahill actually know about the ins and outs of this case when he wasn’t coaching her at the time?" added another.

"Simona didn’t do any of what’s been suggested according to…you?, Baby I take it you didn’t read the 126 page report…go ahead and do that for me," commented another fan.