Australian Football

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Key Facts

Full name
Harold Coventry

Known as
Harry Coventry

Harry Coventry


ClubLeagueCareer spanGamesGoalsAvgWin %AKIAHBAMKBV
LatrobeNWFA1897-1909
MerseyNWFU1910-1912
LatrobeNWFU1913-1927
NWFA1897-1909
NWFU1910-1927
Total1897-1927

Prior to the emergence of Horrie Gorringe, Harry Coventry could lay serious claim to having been the finest rover ever seen in Tasmanian football. Quick, elusive, and a deadly accurate kick with either foot, he debuted with Latrobe in 1897 aged just thirteen, and by the turn of the century he was acknowledged to have all the makings of a champion. When South Melbourne visited Tasmania and played a combined north-west coastal team in 1903, Coventry produced an eye-catching performance that soon had VFL clubs chasing his signature. Twenty-one years later, when Coventry was aged forty, that pursuit was still going on - and still failing. Happy in Latrobe, where he had secure work as a chemist, Coventry saw no reason to uproot himself and perhaps compromise his future in an unfamiliar and challenging environment.

After thirteen seasons with Latrobe he embarked on a three-season walkabout in 1910, spending the first and last of those seasons with Mersey, and playing the 1911 season with Launceston. At heart he was always a Diehard, however, and the 1913 season saw him back home with Latrobe.

Coventry officially retired at the end of the 1924 season, but continued to play in home matches for some time afterwards. Then, when asked to take over as coach of the Diehards three years later, he inevitably chose to bring his boots with him, and added several more games to a tally which, though unknown, was almost certainly a Latrobe Football Club record.

Coventry played in five Latrobe premiership sides and was a regular member of NWFA/NWFU representative combinations.

Oft-mooted suggestions that Coventry played “in excess of 500 senior games” during his career have been comprehensively scotched by authoritative Launceston-based football historian Ross Smith.

Author - John Devaney

Sources

Full Points Footy's Tasmanian Football Companion

Footnotes

* Behinds calculated from the 1965 season on.
+ Score at the end of extra time.