Brent 'Boomer' Harvey, 427 and counting

Michael Tuck is a legend of Australian football folklore. He won seven premierships with Hawthorn in a career that spanned three different decades.

However, he is best recognised by a record that has stood for a quarter of a century – the games record in the AFL.

With a staggering 426 of them, most people laughed at the prospect of this astronomical number being sighted, let alone broken. That was until a skinny, red-headed jockey from Preston came along.

When Brent Harvey runs out onto Etihad Stadium on Saturday night against St Kilda, he will be without peer as playing the most games in AFL/VFL history and will underline his status as a true giant of our game. That’s not bad for a guy who stands at 172cm. Being a big week for the club, the man himself and certainly the competition as a whole, let’s dig a little deeper into the story behind the man they call ‘Boomer’.

Brent Harvey was recruited to North Melbourne with pick #47 in the 1995 national draft. When he walked into Arden Street, the club was on the brink of its most dominant period since the glory days of the seventies.

Glenn Archer, Wayne Carey and Mick Martyn were some of the men walking around the place, so you wouldn’t blame a kid who came in at a tick over 5 foot 4 and weighed 67 kilos for being a little intimidated.

This was where the hard work that is now synonymous with Harvey first began. He had to push harder than most to break into such a great side and after plying his trade in the reserves for nearly a full season in 1996, he finally got the nod from Denis Pagan.

He debuted in the last round of North’s premiership season. Few would have batted an eyelid at a little kid running out for a one-stat home-and-away game, but this debut would turn out to be no ordinary one.

In fact, over the next two decades ‘Boomer’ would go about terrorising opposition sides, inventing the now common midfielder-forward role and becoming one of the greatest players of the modern era.

So what separates him from the rest? Why has he done what no other could and what are things he can do that others cannot?

First of all, as a North Melbourne person I’ve been lucky enough to witness a lot of Harvey doing what he does best live and can genuinely say I’m yet to see a smarter footballer.

There are certainly players with more natural ability and even match-winning qualities – his former skipper Carey comes to mind – but there are not many who nearly always make the right decision with ball in hand.

When you combine these footy smarts with merciless execution it becomes clear why opposition coaches still put the most time into Harvey before they play North.

He hurts you if you let him and finds ways to hurt you even with a lockdown tag. He has won games, turned games and been in the ‘right spot at the right time’ far too often for it be a coincidence. You won’t hear an argument from his opponents who know this all too well.

See below for a full list of Harvey’s career numbers, but it is worth mentioning that Champion Data record statistics that give us terrific insight into which players excel at certain aspects of the game.

There is one that underlines why ‘Boomer’ is so damaging. Only last year Harvey was ranked #1 in the competition for effective disposals inside forward 50 – that’s seven per cent better than the rest.

In 2016 out of 800 odd AFL players he has had a fall from grace to fourth in the competition.

If you let this guy dispose of the ball in attack you’re in trouble, which is why he has copped close tagging attention for his entire career – the ultimate professional compliment. This attention was also not unusual for players the ilk of Greg Williams and Rob Harvey who could ‘work in a phone box’ and make excellent decisions with scary regularity.

Time stopped when they got the ball and it always seemed like they had a few more seconds than others. Fast forward to 2016 and the mantle has been handed down to guys like Sam Mitchell and Scott Pendlebury who just never make mistakes and never, ever look rushed.

Like all the players mentioned above Harvey possesses these abilities and doesn’t waste the footy. I could probably count on two hands how many times I have seen him caught holding the ball which demonstrates extraordinary spacial awareness and over twenty years, he has built a reputation burning off players half his age with raw pace.

Harvey has not only had to adapt his game from the brutal contest after contest style of the nineties to the frenetic maul like footy we see today, but also re-invent himself from small forward to midfielder to a hybrid midfielder-forward position that he has made his own and still sets the bar for.

When you add a lazy 500 odd goals to that mix we have ourselves a career full of blistering highlights that rivals anyone in the game.

It is difficult to pick out highlights when a player has so many but there are a couple of stand-out moments that typify Harvey the footballer. In 1999, a day after his 21st birthday, he lit up a mud-soaked MCG alongside the best players in the land and in doing so and took home the EJ Whitten Medal for being the best on ground in the last State of Origin game ever played.

If five goals that day didn’t get everyone on notice, people certainly did when he had a premiership medal around his neck three months later. With success comes challenges and those challenges were big for Harvey in 2010 when the skipper was blanketed in Round 2 against the Saints, being kept to a paltry five disposals.

The media had the knives out, ‘expert’ commentators were questioning how long the then 32 year-old could keep it up, and calls for a potential retirement at the end of the season were even floating around.

On cue, next week the little man produced the performance of his career with a 44-touch masterclass at the same venue, putting West Coast to the sword in the process. A seven bounce ‘point of the century’ stood out from that game as he made professional athletes look like witches hats.

It was a standard response from a champion and put any critics firmly back in their box, a box they are still safely locked away in six years later!

Obviously to play for as long and as well as Harvey has there has to be something a bit special or different at play too. Recently, North director of football Geoff Walsh pointed to Harvey’s genuine love for training as the main factor behind his durability.

When you consider the fact that the coaches have to often ban him from the club at times in the off season from training too much, you can see why.

Insane levels of commitment to his craft and countless hours of hard work not only allow Harvey to be the player he is but also speaks volumes to his professionalism and his insatiable appetite to improve.

On the eve of his record-breaking game Harvey still gets tagged almost every week and is always holding himself to ridiculously high standards, as evidenced by his post match comments after the Kangas win against Collingwood on Friday night.

Responding to a question about being challenged by the Magpies, he pointed to a couple of regulation shots for goal he missed and claimed he’d have to ‘work on his goal kicking at training this week’.

Love him or hate him, and there are plenty that love to dig the boots in, the footy world will stand as one on Saturday and applaud.

Brent Harvey has played a minimum of 20 games in 16 of his past 18 seasons at the highest level, demonstrating an unparalleled longevity that has seen him get better with age. I implore all North Melbourne people to get down to Docklands on Saturday night not only to witness history, but also to pay tribute to a bloke who is small in stature but an absolute giant in giving back to the game that has given him so much.

The lure of a second flag is the carrot driving Harvey and when he inevitably signs on another one-year contract extension for next year, as has been the case for the last six seasons, nothing will stand in his way of 450.

Well done ‘Boomer’ on a magnificent career, 427 of the best.

Boomber by the numbers
4 x All Australian (2000, 2005, 2007, 2008)
5 x Syd Barker Medallist (2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010)
Premiership Player (1999)
North Melbourne Team of the Century
EJ Whitten Medallist (1999)
187 Brownlow Votes (7th in history)
511 Goals (second at NM behind Carey)
9066 disposals (3rd behind Robert Harvey, Kevin Bartlett) *stat available since 1965
1035 running bounces (1st) *stat available since 1998
1617 inside 50’s (1st) *stat available since 1998
Average of 21.28 disposals per game (30+ on 59 occasions)
234 wins, 189 losses and 3 draws
23 finals, 21 consecutive seasons
Played with an incredible 166 teammates in home-and-away games