From the moment he started out on a marathon footballing journey, Robert Harvey attracted attention.

It wasn’t something that he sought. But when you are about to play your first senior game at 16 years of age, and you come from one of Victoria’s most famous sporting families, there are bound to be headlines.

In his book 'Harves', he recalled the lead-up to his first game.

“The Herald Sun rang up and wanted to do a story on me, and I was reluctant at first and didn’t want the reporter to come down. The editor then rang Dad and said that ‘people like to know these things’. I can imagine the only reason I said it was that I was embarrassed. It would have all been too much for me. I look forced in the photo and it took them ages to take it. We didn’t have a proper footy in the house at the time. It was this old shabby-looking plastic footy!”

Robert Harvey’s grandfather Merv had been a Test cricketer, and Merv’s brother Neil was one of Australia’s greatest batsmen.

For Robert Harvey the 1988 season had been a blur. He came into the seniors after having begun the year in the under-19s.

“It was pretty hard to believe that so much had happened in a short space of time. Just 18 weeks earlier I had played the very ordinary first game in the back pocket for the under-19s, thinking I was going to get dropped and packed off back to Seaford for the rest of my football career. Now I was about to play my first League game at senior level. I couldn’t believe it."

Robert Harvey poses with a "shabby-looking plastic footy" - Herald Sun, 1988

"I went to school on the Friday because I was still doing Year 11 and they had photocopied the back page of The Sun and had stuck up copies on the wall all over the place. For someone like me who is naturally shy it was weird and all a bit much to take. Obviously there was a lot of talk around school that day. My concentration in class was never that great and you can imagine how much I was concentrating on my schoolwork that day.”

“In his first game at Western Oval against the Bulldogs, he was named on the half forward flank. At the first bounce I came off the square and the ball landed in my arms. I got the first touch of the match, but after that there wasn’t much that I did in the game. I had 10 to 12 touches playing off the flank and we got smacked by about 12 goals.”

Robert Harvey in his iconic No. 35 jumper after his last game in 2008.

Harvey and another first gamer Brett Bowey were part of coach Darrel Baldock’s strategy of giving youngsters a taste of the big time late in the year.

“Doc told me and Bowser (Brett Bowey) that we would be playing the last four games, no matter what happened. That was pretty handy because on form I should have been dropped . The next week was the same for me – terrible, but in the last two games I showed a few glimpses.  Suppose I started to take a few deep breaths and just focus and think about it more. Plus there was a bit of an element of feeling that there were only two games to go and you had nothing to lose and you could try and make an impact.”

An otherwise forgettable 69-point loss to Footscray nevertheless had its own place in Saints history, because it was the day that Robert Harvey – the skinny kid wearing No. 52 – began a 21-season career that would encompass a club record 383 games.

A favourite son had been born.