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Sport Nation
Eagle for life: Harley's desire to remain out West
Jaiden Sciberras • August 3rd, 2025 2:42 pm
Sam Edmund has provided an update on Harley Reid’s ongoing contract negotiation with the West Coast Eagles.
It had been reported that the star youngster was demanding a major deal in order to remain at the Eagles, with many suspecting that the nature of the deal was some form of an ultimatum – pay up or leave the club.
However, as Edmund reported on Saturday, the nature of the negotiation is far from ransom, with the former No.1 pick determined to remain an Eagle for the foreseeable future.
“West Coast and Harley Reid’s manager are in the thick of negotiations at the moment,” Edmund told SEN Crunch Time.
“Harley – bottom line - he wants to stay at West Coast. He has actually instructed Nick Gieschen (Reid’s manager) to get a deal done with the Eagles before this initial three-year deal expires at the end of 2026.
“Harley is happy there, he has got his mates there, he is invested there, but a deal obviously still needs to be done. This is a negotiation at the moment. You see words like ‘ransom’ and ‘hostage’… it’s a negotiation.
“The ball is in the West Coast Eagles’ court at the moment. They made an offer to retain Reid a long time ago, and the Reid camp sent it off the back. Now it’s with West Coast, and this offer from Nick Gieschen is huge – there’s no other word to describe it.
“When factored into the way the game is growing, in the salary cap space, the average player wage space – it’s just market value. It’s what the market is saying Harley Reid is worth.
“The average wage this year - $460,000. It will be $520,000 in 2027, growing all the time. The next CBA will most likely have another 30 per cent uplift in it as well. So, Gieschen has put to West Coast a contract proposal that would see Reid paid more than $2 million a year for 11 years. It would be an 11-year deal in totality, and that’s what the market is saying he is worth right now.
“It actually wouldn’t surprise at all if Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera ends up getting a $2 million deal in this very next contract. Clubs have the money, and at that length, you can back-end the deal, front-end the deal, shift money around.
“It seems a lot at the moment, but if it’s an 11-year deal and he is forfeiting his free agency rights, it might be the only deal that Harley Reid signs. By 2037, when the deal expires, someone might be on $3 million by then.
“Nick Gieschen, by my understanding, isn’t fishing around. He is dealing exclusively with West Coast; he is looking to have that deal trumped. At the moment, it’s West Coast’s decision to make.”
Reid has recently been put on ice for the remainder of the 2025 AFL season, with the Eagles remaining at the bottom of the ladder.
