Robert Harvey Feature Article

[stkildathunda]

Robert Harvey – Assistant Coach for the midfield, the return of a St Kilda legend

After playing a VFL/AFL record 21 seasons for St Kilda from 1988 to 2008 Robert Harvey spent the next two years as a development/assistant coach at Carlton. Just over a week after Carlton’s 2010 finals campaign ended it was announced that Harvey would be returning to St Kilda as an assistant coach of the midfield.


Football has changed dramatically since Harvey made his debut back as a 16 year old in 1988, then the league was known as the VFL and had only expanded from 12 clubs to 14 the previous year. St Kilda played their home games at Moorabbin, teams only had 20 players and the interchange bench was usually the domain of players who had been dragged or were injured during the match, there was no such thing as rotations, and most matches were played on a Saturday afternoon.
On 13 September 2010 it was announced that Harvey had accepted an offer to join St Kilda as an assistant coach. In the summer of 2010/11 St Kilda moved into a new elite training facility – The Linen House Centre, located in Seaford, the suburb that one Robert Harvey had grown up and played his junior football in.


It has been quite a journey for Harvey and was undertaken in a far different landscape to the one faced by current players who enter the AFL via the draft and can find themselves recruited by a club on the other side of the country. When Harvey entered the VFL system it was done through a zone rather than the draft, and Seaford was in St Kilda’s zone.
Robert first went to the St Kilda Football Club in November 1985 to train with the St Kilda under-15s squad for the 1986 Victorian under-15 schoolboy championships. During 1987 Harvey played in an under-17s premiership with his suburban club Seaford. Months later in early 1988 Harvey turned up to under-19s training with St Kilda and was daunted to find 100 other young blokes there also trying out. Not knowing anyone else Harvey found it a very different proposition to playing with his mates at Seaford. Once the practice matches started Harvey felt more comfortable. One of the other players trying out was Shane Warne who ended up playing under-19s football for St Kilda and one reserves game before getting cut at the start of the 1989 season. Warne is considerably more famous for playing cricket for Australia, developing into one of the best leg spinners the world has ever seen and taking over 700 test wickets.

Full article at link above. Follows the entire playing & coaching career of the great Robert Harvey. Thought he deserved a thread of his own..

 

[SA1NTER]

That is one long read, going through Bangers whole career. Good stuff!

 

[stkildathunda]

haha yea its not the shortest article in history... Need to take a holiday to read it all. haha