After winning his opening game in charge – on the road against 2006 preliminary finalist Adelaide – he admits now to thinking coaching was a little bit easier than he had expected.
So buoyed was the long-time assistant to Essendon great Kevin Sheedy, he entered his second match as coach thinking his Dockers were a chance to knock off a Geelong team that had not lost in three months.
Harvey, who had taken the reins from Chris Connolly, spoke at a function in the build-up to that match alongside Cats counterpart Mark Thompson and the banter flew.
Thompson made the point that Harvey didn't seem too uneasy about facing the ladder-leaders or coaching against his 1993 premiership captain for the first time. He added the Cats were on autopilot as they cruised towards what would be a drought-breaking premiership.
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"I certainly found out what he was talking about when that game was finished," Harvey says now. "We just got wiped off the park that day."
It's a different landscape in 2014. Fremantle has won four of its past five matches against Geelong, including two finals in Victoria, and the clubs are engaged in one of the game's best existing rivalries. There is nothing surer than sparks flying when they meet at Simonds Stadium.
So how did it come to be? Playing in finals and big games stokes a rivalry, but there is more to these spiteful clashes, which have resulted in 18 Tribunal charges since 2008.
Reflecting on the Geelong-Fremantle rivalry now, former Cats skipper Tom Harley believes it can be traced back to an "ugly" game of football at Simonds Stadium in 2008.
That match is remembered for Dean Solomon's late elbow to Cameron Ling's face – well after Ling had disposed of the ball – which left the Cat with a depressed fracture of the cheekbone and earned Solomon an eight-week suspension.
That incident, and Fremantle's overall approach to the match, sparked a war of words between the clubs.
"At the end of that game we definitely thought, 'Hang on guys, you haven't achieved anything as a club, you're carrying on like pork chops and you're going about it in the wrong way'," Harley told the AFL Record.
Harvey says, "That 2008 game was about trying to dismantle the way they wanted to play."
While there is still spite in the matches, it is a rivalry now known for producing memorable, close clashes between two teams contending for premierships.
Adding another layer of controversy was last year's qualifying final, played at Simonds Stadium – which had not been a finals venue in 116 years – because Victorian clubs were hosting all four games in the first week of finals.
On Saturday the Dockers return to Simonds Stadium for the first time since that match and the stakes are high again, with both teams fighting to move into the top two.
Read the full story in the round 20 AFL Record
