Robert Harvey (footballer)

Robert Jeffrey Harvey (born 21 August 1971) is an Australian rules football coach and former player. He is currently an assistant coach for the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). As a player, he played his entire career with St Kilda in the AFL. Following retirement, Harvey embarked on a career in assistant coaching which has spanned across three decades, highlighted by a nine-game stint as caretaker head coach of the Collingwood Football Club in 2021.

Harvey was recognised as one of the top 50 players of all time in ''The Australian Game of Football,'' a book commissioned by the AFL in 2008 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Australian rules football. The list was compiled by ''Herald Sun'' journalist Mike Sheahan. Harvey was known for his running ability and considered one of the best short passes of 15 to 30 metres in the history of the game. He holds St Kilda's record for most career games. At his retirement, at the end of the 2008 AFL season, Harvey had played the third-highest total career games in league history, with 383 games. Currently, he ranks sixth in games played; Harvey was also the final active player from the VFL era of the league (pre-1990) to retire.

Harvey won numerous individual awards and medals during his playing career. He won consecutive Brownlow Medals, the league's highest individual honour, in 1997 and 1998. He won St Kilda's best and fairest award—now called the Trevor Barker Award—in 1992, 1994, 1997 and 1998. He was selected in the All-Australian team eight times, with his first All-Australian award being in 1992 and his last in 2003. He won three E. J. Whitten Medals, awarded to the player judged best player on the ground for Victoria in State of Origin matches; the 1997 AFL Players Association Most Valuable Player Award (now known as the Leigh Matthews Trophy); and the Michael Tuck Medal for player judged best on ground in the 2004 pre-season cup final. In 2012, Harvey was inducted in the Australian Football Hall of Fame. On 24 September 2013, Harvey was named the AFL’s Assistant Coach of the Year at the AFL Coaches Association awards presentation.

Harvey is the grandson of former Australian test cricketer Merv Harvey and grandnephew of Neil Harvey, who was Australia's leading run-scorer and century-maker behind Don Bradman. His younger brother, Anthony Harvey, played four games for St Kilda in 1994 before captaining Norwood to the 1997 SANFL premiership. Provided by Wikipedia