Harley Reid tipped to shine as West Coast Eagles coach goes public with massive change

Andrew McQualter says Harley Reid has a lot of work to do in pre-season as the coach implements a new game plan around the No.1 draft pick. McQualter has high hopes for the youngster who came into the AFL with massive expectations but still managed to exceed what almost anyone could imagine in his maiden season in 2024

And the pressure on the 19-year-old’s shoulders is set to go up another gear in 2025, with McQualter rolling out an entirely new style of play, which will centre around Reid as a key member of the Eagles midfield while also having the ability to move the star player into the back half as required. McQualter, who spent last year as an assistant to Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin after a successful stint at Richmond, knows Reid will face even more attention from opponents in his second season but has backed the talented youngster to shine in his new system

“He’s going to have a huge pre-season learning a new game plan, which is a challenge for someone in their second year,” McQualter said on Monday, as he took charge of training for the first time. “There will be no doubt some time to adapt to that but we’ll just look for him to keep doing the fundamentals of the game really well. We’ll try to set him up in a role where he can really shine and the expectation of him will be to give back to the group as well.

We’ll put things in place but he’ll also learn to deal with it himself. I’m pretty sure he handled himself pretty well for a large part of last year. We’ll put some mechanisms around him but we’ll also have high expectations of him to be able to fight through his own battles.”