Kane Cornes has found himself at the centre of much criticism after a comment he made about West Coast draftee Harley Reid.
After Reid appeared to cramp up late in his side’s narrow loss to Essendon, Cornes made the point that the teenager likely needs to work on his fitness in order to ensure he can run out games, particularly given his potential ceiling as a star of the game.
However, many in the footy industry and the general public have taken issue with the critique of Reid, given he is only seven games into his career and already shown his enormous potential.
Speaking following the blowback, Cornes stood by his criticism.
“At the core of what I’ve said is – if you want to be a great player, a champion, you need to understand your shortfalls, regardless of how many games you have played and you work hard to address them,” Cornes told SEN’s Sportsday.
“So if Garry Lyon (for example) is coaching the West Coast Eagles and he’s coaching Harley Reid, does he just let him go and say ‘Okay, I’m not coaching you until you get to game 40 because you can discover it for yourself’.
“Or do you say, ‘Harley, I noticed you cramped in the last five minutes, what was your diet going into the game? How was your preparation coming off a week off? How has your intensity been? What’s your effort been like in the gym? What’s your recovery been like?’
“Or do you not coach players because they’re only into their seventh game. No player in the history of the game has been given more praise than Harley Reid, including by myself, I said he’s changed the fortunes of that whole footy club and I couldn’t be any more impressed with how he has dealt with the extraordinary media attention that has come his way. I love how competitive he is…
“But if you want to be great, go and see what the great players are doing and see if there’s anything you can learn. Not only the great players at other clubs, but the players at your own club.
“Now, he is going to be a champion. How good he will be is up to him because the game is littered with highly talented players who never maximised their talents and just because you’re seven games in, that doesn’t mean you can’t fast-track that and get there sooner.
“I reckon if you went to Jason Horne-Francis and asked him if he would do anything differently in his first year, I reckon if he was honest he would say ‘I would’ve prepared myself better and I would’ve been more professional and maybe I could have learned from other players and got there sooner’.
“This guy is going to make $1 million a season very shortly and people can’t take some feedback that says he was a liability in the last five minutes of that game, so let’s go and work out why that was the case so that doesn’t happen again. Is that not reasonable criticism?”
Reid is the number one 19-year-old in the AFL according to Wheelo Player Ratings, with a rating of 13.21. Caleb Windsor sits second at 8.84.
Only Nick Daicos and George Wardlaw have higher ratings than him of players 21 or under.
WATCH HIS FULL EXPLANATION BELOW
.@kanecornes adds further context to his Harley Reid comments that took the AFL world by storm on Monday night.@SENSportsday | #AFL pic.twitter.com/w7Z62rEidS
— SEN 1116 (@1116sen) May 7, 2024
