Perth veteran Jamie Harnwell is looking forward to breaking Bobby Despotovski’s record for games played with the Glory, but after a year marred by injury, he isn’t counting his chickens just yet.
Thirty-two-year-old Harnwell was re-signed by the Glory for another season on Tuesday, but the 235-game club favourite knows there’s a lot of hard work ahead if he’s to play the seven games he needs to take the record from Despotovski.
“It will be a huge thing for me, you know taking over from Bobby, who’s obviously a good friend of mine and a fantastic player,” Harnwell said.
“It will be a real treat and something to look back on when I do finish playing.”
“(But) I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me in the off-season.”
“It was probably one to forget personally for me, I’ve never sort of experienced a season like that,” Harnwell added, referring to the serious hamstring and knee injuries that limited his appearances badly.
“I didn’t want to end up the way I finished this season. I was very disappointed in how my body went and with what happened obviously with the club as well, the way we exited the finals.”
“(So) I’ve got sort of big goals for next season. I want to finish top goal scorer again and try and get a hat trick of those before I finish playing and obviously I want to win the A-League and add that to the NSL championships.”
“The club obviously has some massive goals as well, so it ties in pretty nicely.”
Harnwell said he would have understood if Glory coach Dave Mitchell hadn’t wanted to take a risk on him for another season.
“The injuries I had this season, it was touch and go,” Harnwell admitted.
“I could see if the club didn’t want to, I could see their reasoning.”
“But I think in the games I was fit for, I certainly showed what I could do.”
“I scored goals and created problems for oppositions when I was playing up front, so I think the club’s just backing me to get 100 per cent fit and play in hopefully every game next season.”
