Harvey debuted for the Saints in 1988 aged just 16.
St Kilda was on its way to another in a series of wooden spoon finishes and coach Darrel Baldock turned to youth.
It didn’t take long for the midfielder from Seaford to make an impact and soon enough he was a regular part of the St Kilda team.
His evasive movement and elite running were without peer in the AFL and he won the first of four club best and fairest awards shortly after his 21st birthday in 1992.
Harvey was selected to the All-Australian team eight times and also represented Victoria in eight games. In three of those matches he won the E.J. Whitten medal as Victoria’s best on ground.
His finest individual accolades came in 1997 and 1998 when he won the Brownlow medal as the best player in the AFL of those years. Harvey was also a member of the losing St Kilda Grand Final team of 1997.
Playing in an era of so many stars, Harvey was considered the equal of contemporaries James Hird, Michael Voss and Nathan Buckley as one of the best players of his time.
A reluctant captain, Harvey took over the mantle as St Kilda skipper from teammate Nathan Burke in 2001 and 2002 before passing it on to Aaron Hamill in 2003 as part of coach Grant Thomas’ rotation policy.
But not having the captaincy that year seemed to free him up as he won All-Australian selection and the Saints best and fairest 11 years after he first received those gongs.
Harvey became the fourth player to play 300 games for the Saints in the 2004 preliminary final loss to Port Adelaide and soon eclipsed Burke as the club’s games record holder.
He went on to play 383 games – the third most in league history behind Michael Tuck and Kevin Bartlett. Other remarkable statistical feats include a career tally of 215 Brownlow votes – the second most of any player and the fact he polled votes in more than 100 games – the most of any player.
After the 37-year-old’s career came to a close in the 2008 preliminary final loss to Hawthorn, Harvey embarked on a coaching career as a development coach at Carlton.
After two years at the Blues, Harvey returned to Moorabbin for two years before moving on to Collingwood at the end of 2011 as an assistant to Buckley.
