Speaking on Fox Footy’s AFL 360, the veteran opened up on the team’s consistency issues.
“I think when we play the good teams, we just go out there and play and the shackles are off,” he told Gerard Whateley and Mark Robinson.
“When we play the teams that are a bit lower on the ladder, I think we go into our shell and are a little bit scared to make mistakes.
“I don’t think we go in with a big head. I just think we play complacent football.
“Today the competition is that even, you can’t have lapses in concentration, whether it’s for 25 minutes or for a full a game.”
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Harvey says the team reviews following losses this year have exposed areas of improvement.
“We haven’t sat down and said ‘we are playing complacent football’, but when we look at our edits on Monday and some of the things we do, we go away from our game plan, we go away from the way we want to play and Brad (Scott) nails us on it.
“We have shown this year that we are very, very good, but we’ve also shown that we are very poor. We’ve got to even that gap up, and once we can, we can be a consistently good team.”
Questioned as to whether laziness is an issue amongst the playing group, Harvey was open and honest.
“I think sometimes it could (be), and probably a few players take a few liberties,” he added.
“We see them (the edits) on the Monday and the boys… Brad looks them in the eye and the rest of the group and they get shown out. We are trying to iron that out at the minute.”
The 36-year-old believes it’s up to the more experienced members of the team to set the standard.
“I think Brad speaks to the leadership group a little bit more than he would the younger players, purely to get the leaders to show the way in that aspect.
“I’ve been hit up, (Nick) Dal Santo, (Andrew) Swallow, Drew (Petrie), we’ve all been hit up this year because we are the leaders of the football club and we have to show these guys, consistently this is the way to do it.
With the Kangaroos having shown they can beat the best, the expectations from the coach have understandably risen.
“I think he’s now got a greater understanding of what we are capable of.
“That probably happened earlier on in the season when we beat the top four teams, and now he’s not letting us get away with the things we used to get away with."
