After six pre-season apprenticeship, Harry Edwards is finally ready to make his mark
For the majority of Harry Edwards’ West Coast apprenticeship, he was given a serious football education by a legend of the game. Now, the young Eagle is ready for his chance, writes Mark Duffield.
Late in pre-seasons at West Coast, coach Adam Simpson will usually pick his best team and play them against the rest of his squad in a dress rehearsal for their first practice match against a rival club.
Until 2022 it frequently meant that Harry Edwards, a skinny, lanky tall defender, would have to match up on champion forward Josh Kennedy – with West Coast’s best mids feeding Kennedy just to rub salt into the wound.
Edwards, 23, is grateful for the experience and the football education that came with those match simulations now.
At the time, watching from the sidelines, it looked like cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on a youngster trying to find his feet, against an established champion making sure he had found his form.
Edwards has done a six pre-season apprenticeship at the Eagles after being taken with pick 17 in the 2018 rookie draft.
He has managed 32 games over that time, endured a frustrating year with groin and wrist injuries last year which wiped him out of all but two games.
It was a serious enough groin problem for the club to choose him as one of three players to send to the Aspetar clinic in Qatar to work under renowned performance rehabilitation specialist Enda King.
The other two players on that trip – Jeremy McGovern and Elliot Yeo, have produced their best and most durable seasons in several years so far in 2024.
There are some signs from Edwards that he might make it three success stories out of three.
Edwards has played just two AFL games this year after breaking a finger on the eve of the season.
“It has been a bit of an up and down year for me. I had surgery and missed the first four or five games. I came back through the WAFL – then played against Gold Coast a month ago – back down to the WAFL – got some form together and got another game on the weekend,” he said.
He played against the Gold Coast because Tom Barrass had been suspended. Then when Barrass returned to the team Edwards got tipped out again. But he was back in the team for the match against St Kilda on Saturday and did a few things that suggested there might be more senior football to come for him in 2024.
Edwards can now reflect on a six-year AFL apprenticeship. And on reflection he feels he is finally ready physically to compete at this level. Even those brutal match simulations playing against guys like Kennedy and Jack Darling have played an important role, he reckons.
“It has been a very, very long apprenticeship for me but a very good one and I am very grateful to have played against those guys. Even now I have got Jake Waterman and Oscar Allen to test myself against and I have also had people like Will Schofield and Tom Barrass, Jeremy McGovern ahead of me down back so I have learned different things off very good players. It is helping to make me the player I am hoping to be.”
Young players often underestimate how much work there is for them still to do when they arrive in an AFL system, he said.
“It is a bit of a shock to find how raw you actually are. I have known that for a while now. As you grow and get better as a player you realise how much growth there is. They obviously saw me as a long term prospect with a lot of development in me.”
“I feel like I have hit the point now where I am ready to repay that.”
In order to have the chance to repay it Edwards knows he is still at the mercy of selectors to some degree. He is 197cm tall and he looks even taller than that. McGovern and Barrass, automatic selections in any Eagles team they are fit for, are also 197cm and it makes for a very tall backline if all three get selected.
“Often it comes down to team balance. We are relatively tall down back and it is up to the coaches where they want to go with that. I am obviously going to advocate for it because it means I get to play,” he said. “If we can force teams to kick long down the line it is very good for us.”
What he does say though is that he now feels ready to play at this level when called upon. It was a feeling he got as soon as match simulations started over summer.
“It took me quite a few years to be ready to play AFL because I was quite tall and skinny and wasn’t ready for the level. Now I feel like I am,” he said.
“Once we got back playing match simulation I started to feel like I was physically ready but you don’t really know until you come back and play games.”
He said continuity in the team now “would certainly help” but would depend on what sort of team balance selectors wanted down back.
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“It does become hard to build any kind of form or get used to the level if you are in or out. But that is not up to me. I just have to keep putting my best foot forward and playing as well as I can whenever I get the opportunity.”
The change in Edwards’ level of confidence has coincided with a change in mood at West Coast after the turmoil of two injury ravaged years in 2022 and 2023.
“I would certainly hope the losses we were having are gone,” he said. “We are moving in the right direction. We have got a good young group coming through and everyone is on the positives. The vibe around here is a lot better.”
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