Kane Cornes not backing down from Harley Reid comments as he reacts to ‘devil’ The West Australian back page

Clickbait king Kane Cornes admits he has been left stunned after the West Australian public’s reaction to his unfair rant about Harley Reid’s fitness. Cornes has copped it from pillar to post this week after sharing a scathing assessment of the 19-year-old, questioning his training methods and fitness after cramping late against Essendon. Among those to slam the controversial commentator was The West Australian expert columnist Danielle Laidley, with the former player and coach stating he was simply out of touch. Cornes was then depicted as a devil in a tongue-in-cheek back page of Thursday’s The West, but the Port Adelaide premiership player laughed off the criticism. “We knew this one would be touchy, particularly with the Perth media because he’s such a darling over there, it’s like I’ve shot Bambi,” Cornes said on the In the Back Pocket podcast. “It’s the biggest overreaction you’ve ever seen at the core of what I was saying, look at what the best players were doing and can you learn anything from that? “This guy is going to put his hand out for a million bucks shortly and I think it’s fair to question why he can’t run out a game.” Cornes’ co-host Nathan Brown — a commentator and former AFL star — even questioned if Cornes had gone too hard and perhaps should have run his idea past his wife first. Many took issue with Cornes targeting a player who is only seven games into an AFL career, with others bringing up his own lacklustre stats after his first seven games. “The bookies would have given you 100/1 that Cornes was going to play 300 games, be a premiership player and win club best and fairest awards if you look at his stats from his first seven games — 9 disposals then 15, 14, 10, 17, 14 and two,” Danielle Laidley wrote in her column for The West Australian. “Were those stats because Kane wasn’t fit enough? Was he not prepared? He would have been mortified coming under that type of scrutiny. “It’s about the journey Kane, not just the destination!” Despite Cornes’ question marks of Harley, Collingwood coach Craig McRae is not underplaying the threat he poses to the Pies, even suggesting he shares qualities with Nick Daicos. “The little snippets I’ve seen on TV, he’s got a bit of Dusty (Martin) in him, he’s got a bit of Nick Daicos and ... the other player is like Ben Cousins, storming out of stoppage with that No.9 on his back,” he said. McRae would not say if he would line Daicos up on Reid but believed they would seek each other at some point. “That’s an interesting one,” McRae said. “Very competitive guy, I’m sure Harley’s the same, comes from the same breed. “I’m certain they’ll find each other playing on each other at some stage.”