“Not taking it seriously”: Cornes questions Tayla Harris’ preparation after season-ending injury

Melbourne AFLW star Tayla Harris has been sent in for season-ending surgery on her shoulder after just one game in season 2024.

The key tall suffered a dislocated shoulder during a pre-season camp, and while the Demons were confident she could play in 2024, after tweaking the injury against the Cats in Round 1, scans have now deemed her shoulder is at too high a risk of structural damage.

While the injury may have nothing to do with her pre-season preparation, SEN host Kane Cornes had to question whether Harris prepared her body well enough for the 2024 campaign after being in Paris just 24 days out from the season beginning.

He also called on Harris to “get serious” after AFLW players received a pay increase last season.

“Tayla Harris is out for the season with a shoulder injury,” Cornes said on SEN Sportsday.

“I mean, this just could be bad luck with this shoulder injury, but you'd have to question, as I did at the time, whether she had prepared her body as best as she possibly could to withstand the rigours of a short AFLW season. The answer to that is no.

“I see Mon Conti playing dual sports … it’s very likely you could get injured (playing basketball) and miss the AFLW season, what if that happened? That’s a possibility and there’s no way we would allow a men’s player to play basketball in the off-season.

“I just wonder whether players who now got what they wanted with a huge pay increase (29% from 2022 to 2023 with more rises until 2027), and the two that I reference would be on $100,000+ a year, I would guess, but we don't know because it's not public.

“Are they taking it seriously? Because I can hardly imagine the lack of hours Tayla Harris has spent at the Melbourne Football Club this AFLW season, and now she's out for the year.

“She can't be serious and she's not serious.”

While Cornes concedes that a shoulder injury could easily happen to a player even if they completed a full pre-season and prepared perfectly, he simply doesn’t believe that Harris is taking her AFLW duties seriously enough.

“She was overseas only a few weeks before the season, she was in Paris,” Cornes said.

“She comes back, she rips her quad, so she has a week off there, then they say she's fit for Round 1.

“She has two possessions and hurts her shoulder, and now she's out for the season.

“I get you can't help injuries, and even if she had done a full pre-season, she should have got injuries - so  spare me the Twitter notifications on that one – but she’s just not taking it seriously.”

While they lost Harris during their Round 1 game, the Demons went on to beat the Cats 40-42 at GMHBA Stadium.

Melbourne next host Brisbane at Casey Fields on Saturday, September 7.