After having three weeks on the sidelines, North Melbourne’s most talked about player Brent Harvey will return to Friday night’s Semi Final against the Cats feeling “fresh”.
The 36 year-old is planning to slip back into gear, following a three week suspension which saw him miss the Roos’ Elimination Final victory over Essendon last Saturday night.
“My body feels good and I’ve had three weeks off. I’ve done a little bit of extra running but that’s about it, so I’m fresh and hopefully I can contribute,” Harvey said.
“My role will be to come into the team and just play my role, there’s nothing special about it, if I can do that and do it well and I’ve got 21 teammates who can do that well as well, then we think we’re a big chance.”
Going into Friday night’s final with opposite issues will provide for an interesting fight, Geelong will strive to rectify their second half fade outs, whilst the Kangaroos hope to put a stop to their slow openings, which nearly had them packing last Saturday night, as they were forced to fight back from a 33-point deficit early in the third quarter.
However, Harvey has the belief that his settled team will fire up early.
“Hopefully we’re not in the position of having a close game where we have to worry about it,” Harvey said.
“We know that we’re finishing well, we don’t really care too much about the opposition in terms of how they finish games and how they start games, as long as we can control what we’ve got control of.”
As highlighted by Harvey, the Cats will have to make sure they emulate the speed of recently returned midfielder and game-changer Daniel Wells.
“His polished ball use is something that we’ve lacked a little bit this year,” Harvey admitted.
“I think (Geelong) have got a lot of talented players going through the midfield going forward, Stokes, Motlop those sort of guys, probably the speed is the biggest thing for them…
“But you add Daniel Wells and that certainly puts a bit of speed back into our team, so maybe we’re a little bit more even matched now.”
Out of this year’s top four contenders, Geelong is the only team that hasn’t fallen to the Kangaroos.
On both occasions this year in Round 10 and 19, the Cats came away with the win.
“We’ll do a thorough review on how they beat us last time and there will be no stone unturned, don’t worry about that,” Harvey said.
“We’re confident… we won our first final, it’s anybody’s ball game in the finals, and we’re excited.”
Despite last week’s fall to the Hawks, Harvey still sees Geelong as a fierce and challenging contender.
“I think they’re a good team… I think they’re an outstanding outfit and I think they have been for a very very long time,” Harvey said.
“Are they as good as they were two or three years ago? I’m not too sure, we’ll find out on Friday night.”
