Former Collingwood star Dale Thomas can relate to Harley Reid better than 99 per cent of Australia’s population.
Arguably no one has entered the AFL with such off-the-Richter-scale hype as West Coast’s wonder boy and reigning No.1 draft pick Reid, but there are similarities with Thomas’ arrival in the Magpies’ nest.
West Coast youngster Harley Reid has taken the league by storm.Credit: AFL Photos
Thomas, now a rising star in commentary ranks with Triple M and Seven after a 258-game career complete with a premiership and All-Australian honours, may never have played for Collingwood if they had not lost to Carlton in a mostly meaningless round-20 match almost two decades ago.
That defeat to the Blues – the eventual wooden-spooners, half a game behind Collingwood – plus two more in the following fortnight meant Mick Malthouse’s team finished with five wins.
The Pies were subsequently one of three clubs that year to score a priority pick under the league’s old system, and used theirs to select Thomas No.2 overall in the 2005 AFL draft.
Another handy player by the name of Scott Pendlebury, who just became the first AFL player to win more than 10,000 disposals, joined the black and white three picks later.
Dale Thomas played in the finals in his first season at Collingwood.Credit: Sebastian Costanzo
The gun teenagers made an instant impact – in particular Thomas, who played 16 games, including an elimination final, to Pendlebury’s nine – as Collingwood returned to September in their debut season, and went on to win the 2010 flag with both starring.
Reid’s brilliant start to his AFL life begs the question: can one player, particularly one so young, transform a downtrodden club’s fortunes and inspire an apathetic fan base in a matter of months?
“It’s clearly too much – there are other reasons West Coast are winning, not just him,” Thomas said.
“It was the story all last year, whether he would end up at West Coast or North Melbourne, before North won that game late … [but] Harley had that statement first goal in the Sydney game and grabbed his jumper, so he’s almost adding to the hype and feeding it.
“It looks like, at the minute, he is embracing it. From personal experience, I wasn’t sure how to handle it. You grow up wanting people to know your name, but when people you don’t know are stopping you in the street asking for photos, and you’re living it, it’s a different story.”
Like Reid, Thomas, known affectionately as “Daisy”, was a marketing darling, too, with golden locks, an uncanny ability to leap over opponents, and a likeability that has crossed over to his post-playing profession.
Reid’s own sliding doors moment has dominated discussion recently.
North Melbourne’s round-24 win last year over Gold Coast in Hobart, as Thomas referenced, meant they dodged a third straight wooden spoon, but handed West Coast the coveted No.1 pick and first dibs on Reid, who is considered a generational talent.
Anyone connected to, or supporting, the Kangaroos is already sick of hearing about it, while the criticism of them not finding a way to “tank” that game has been a bit uncomfortable.
Reid has barely left The West Australian’s back page since even before he became an Eagle, but “Harley Fever” reached extraordinary levels across the past fortnight, with his blistering performances lifting West Coast to back-to-back upset victories.
“If there’s a fan club; I’m buying tickets,” Thomas told this masthead.
“Nick Daicos was a star coming in, but there’s a different aura about this kid. I think it’s the physicality he plays with … he’s doing it all, and matching motors with the best players. There was [Isaac] Heeney in Gather Round, then flipping [Nat] Fyfe over [in the WA derby].
“This is an 18-year-old kid coming in who couldn’t give a stuff about anyone’s standing in the game. There’s a bit of, ‘Come and have this’, and that’s why everyone is watching. There are a handful of [those types] in the comp, and the fact one of them has played only six games says enough.”
Meanwhile, winless North Melbourne are again planted on the bottom.
Patrick Dangerfield has given teenage prodigy Reid his tick of approval.Credit: AFL Photos
Whether it is a false dawn for the Eagles – the 2018 premiers, who were still playing finals in 2020 – remains to be seen, but they will hope budding superstar Reid leads them to the promised land on a similarly slick timeline to Thomas’ Magpies.
Geelong champion Patrick Dangerfield, who, like Reid, is represented by Connors Sports Management, has met the Tongala product but also watched in awe from a distance at his meteoric rise. The eight-time All-Australian, premiership player and Brownlow medallist described Reid as “a special player”, given how he had handled the unprecedented attention and still performed.
“He’s a ripper. The thing that sticks out the most is he wants to be great – he doesn’t want to [just] be good,” Dangerfield said. “He’s going to go all right, I reckon.”
Dangerfield was subject to excessive headlines as a teenager, too, after Adelaide courageously passed on local talent Brad Ebert in preference of the kid from Moggs Creek, near Geelong, and even let him stay in Victoria for his first season to complete his studies.
“I remember the first headline was, ‘He better be good’,” Dangerfield said. “In South Australia or Western Australia, where you’ve got only two clubs, it is a pressure cooker. But one of the great things my very first coach Neil Craig always said was you don’t look for your ups from the media because for all the ups, there will be twice as many downs.
“I suspect that’s the conversation going on internally at West Coast with Harley … [but] it’s harder in practice to implement when you’ve got this profile that I think few players have ever had in the history of the competition.”
West Coast legend Ben Cousins was, like Reid, a headline magnet in his playing days.Credit: Vince Caligiurli
Thomas echoed those sentiments, but believes Reid is already the newest “Prince of Perth”, joining a stellar list of West Coast greats, from Ben Cousins to Chris Judd and Nic Naitanui.
“It’s going to be a hard act to manage because the media will chop him down unless his rise continues at this unbelievable speed,” Thomas said.
In 2005, any club that amassed 20.5 premiership points (no more than five wins) or fewer in any one season received a priority pick before the first round of the next draft.
The AFL changed the system – not for the last time – the next year, reducing the threshold to 16.5 after fierce criticism of Collingwood’s fortune, following grand final appearances in 2002 and 2003.
North Melbourne benefited from special assistance the past two seasons due to their prolonged on-field battles, but the criteria are no longer black and white, or made public. The league’s newest chief executive, Andrew Dillon, appears keen to remove priority picks altogether.
“I would love to have a system in place where you didn’t need them,” Dillon told ABC radio of priority picks last weekend.
Thomas diplomatically sidestepped the topic of whether the Roos should have lost that infamous Gold Coast clash, saying he did not want to join “the easy line of kicking them while they were down”.
He was also sympathetic about handing out priority picks to any team that struggled for an extended period, before pausing and making one of the astute observations he is becoming known for.
“But you have to be careful,” Thomas said. “A month ago, we were talking about how best we could help West Coast. All of a sudden, they’ve launched into a different sphere.”
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