West Coast wunderkind Harley Reid was better than Chris Judd in his first season and is worth an 11-year, $24 million contract, says former Eagles captain and dual premiership player Guy McKenna.

But McKenna warns the deal must come with protection for both parties.

“He is going to be an exceptional player,” McKenna told The West Australian.

“The numbers will seem off the charts but it’s a bit like Alastair Lynch in my day back in 1994 when he got paid $1 million for 10 seasons at Brisbane.

“At the time you just go ‘Wow that’s enormous’, but the average wage has gone up and I think people need to drink some calm down fluid when they think about the numbers.”

The AFL players’ current Collective Bargaining Agreement runs until the end of 2027 and includes a 37 per cent increase in player payments. Over its life the CBA will lead to a rise in average player salaries from $387,000 in 2022 to $519,000 in 2027.

“He might go through two of those and if he signs a contract now, he might be getting paid unders. We don’t know,” McKenna said.

“We need to consider that as far as the numbers go.”

In his first season with the Eagles in 2002, Judd played 22 games and kicked 23 goals, finished third in the club’s best and fairest, was named the AFL Players’ Association’s best first-year player from an average of 15 disposals and 2.6 clearances.

Reid played 20 games and kicked 10 goals as a pure inside midfielder in his debut season in 2024 from an average 18.5 disposals and five clearances. A suspension robbed him of the chance to win the Rising Star award, although he did claim goal of the year.

Reid’s second year in the AFL has provided spectacular highs, tempered by the No. 1 draft pick giving away 60 free kicks in 19 games before an ankle injury last Saturday prematurely ended his season.

“He hasn’t had a lot of support through the midfield,” McKenna said.

“I dare say that’s why (coach) Andrew McQualter has moved him back to half-forward and half-back so he can actually just catch his breath and play the game and hopefully enjoy his game rather than getting basically picked on in the midfield because of the senior boys not being there.

Now Juddy had a career that was absolutely fantastic but from what I saw from Harley Reid last last year I thought he was marginally better than Chris Judd.

“That has probably factored into a bit of his carrying on.

“Like anyone that gets frustrated at work. What do you do? Do you throw your pen on the desk or your stapler at someone.

“He’s no different to someone sitting at a desk getting angry with life.”

McKenna, who helped lure Gary Ablett Jr to Gold Coast in his first year as their inaugural coach in 2011 on a massive deal, said he understood why West Coast had been reluctant to offer long-term contracts in their current rebuild, but Reid was an exception.

“I saw Chris Judd up close in his first year. I’d just retired. I trained with him as an assistant coach,” McKenna said.

“Now Juddy had a career that was absolutely fantastic but from what I saw from Harley Reid last last year I thought he was marginally better than Chris Judd.

“Don’t forget Juddy had Ben Cousins, Chad Fletcher, Daniel Kerr and Dean Cox around him.

“In my time at Gold Coast, Gary Ablett would take two taggers on, so David Swallow, Dion Prestia, Josh Caddy basically were playing by themselves because there’d be two blokes all over Gary.

“I don’t think that happened at West Coast with Harley Reid in the first year but certainly in the second year we’ve seen what happened to him.

“Elliot Yeo has not played through injury, Tim Kelly has had some injuries and form concerns so the one they are going to sit on is Harley Reid because he’s a game changer.

“They’re not sitting on anyone else. That’s why he’s had to fight through and struggle through what he has.

“At Gold Coast, before Gary went down in our last year, I still say we still only had Michael Rischitelli and Gary taking the heat at centre bounces in around the stoppage area and so it allowed Swallow and Prestia to play on that third midfielder.

“It’s a whole lot better than playing on the hard fast tag.

“I mean we will talk about that tall forward coming into the game who gets to play on the second or third tall defender. He’s going to handle himself OK.

“But Sam Day in his first five games for Gold Coast played on all five All-Australian full-backs who had on average spent seven or eight years in a gym.

“Sam Day had spent 50 days in the gym. He just couldn’t physically compete.

“I’d argue with Harley Reid as big and as strong as he is in his first and second year, some of those midfielders he’s playing on have been running up and down AFL grounds for six or seven plus years.

“I always default to the Malcolm Blight 80-20 rule which means 80 per cent of the kids will take three or four years to develop.

“The 20 per cent of which Harley is in, he won’t take three or four years, but unfortunately in the scenario he’s in with the side where it’s at and where the list is that he doesn’t have that senior support.

“To borrow a cricket example, he doesn’t have Geoff Marsh and Justin Langer taking the shine off the ball.

I think the club needs to get on the front foot.

“Harley should be coming in at first or second or third drop, but he’s having to open most weekends for West Coast and in his second year he’s found it hard to deal with and so he should because in his first year he was coming in at second and third drop.”

Under the longest-term option offered to West Coast by Reid’s management and under consideration, he would sign an initial two-year deal with an option for a nine-year extension.

Reid’s current contract expires at the end of 2026, the year the AFL’s 19th team Tasmania can begin recruiting, two years before its entry in the competition.

The Devils’ draft concessions are expected to be picks 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 in 2027, with four of those picks, 5, 7, 9 and 13, coming with a caveat that they must be traded.

McKenna said that was a reason to sign Reid long term, but there must be “guarantees”.

“Maybe there’s milestones in this contract that take him post-Tasmania,” he said.

“I think the club needs to get on the front foot.

“As a coach I never really got into the back-end of contracts but if you are going to do a long-term deal in good faith he needs to say ‘I’m healthy right now, but in four years who knows what is going to happen to my body? So to protect the club here’s some milestones I need to hit’.

“Here’s the first four-five years to get him past Tasmania but reassess then.

“If he averages X number of games then fantastic, then you get rebooted for another say ... three years. Then down the track you look at it again.

“He might need to average 15 games and then the last three years later in his career you might say it is a 13-game average, just to protect the club on a games-played basis regardless of performance.

“He gets long-term security with triggers, but then the club gets protection with its own triggers around what would be six or seven years past the Tasmanian entry.”