Harrison McKay (born 24 December 1997) is a professional

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

er playing for the

Carlton Football Club The Carlton Football Club, nicknamed the Blues, is a professional Australian rules football club that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's top professional competition. Founded in 1864 in Carlton, an inner suburb of Mel ...

in the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

(AFL). In 2021, McKay won the

Coleman Medal The Coleman Medal is an Australian rules football award given annually to the Australian Football League (AFL) player who kicks the most goals in the home-and-away season. It is named after Essendon full-forward John Coleman, one of the most ...

, awarded to the season's leading goalkicker.

Career

A key forward, McKay played junior football at

Warragul Warragul is a town in Victoria, Australia, south-east of Melbourne. Warragul lies between the Strzelecki Ranges to the south and the Mount Baw Baw Plateau of the Great Dividing Range to the north. As of the , the town had a population of 19,85 ...

and state under-18s football with the

Gippsland Power The Gippsland Power is an Australian rules football team in the NAB League, the top statewide under-18 competition in Victoria, Australia. Honours *Premierships (1): 2005 *Runners-up (3): 1999, 2010, 2012 *Wooden Spoons (1): 2003 *Morrish Medal ...

. He was drafted by Carlton with a first-round selection (No. 10 overall) in the 2015 national draft. He missed much of the 2016 season—his first season in the professional system—with stress fractures in his back, and he made his senior debut for the club in Round 18, 2017. McKay began to command a regular place in the Carlton forward line in

2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...

, and he was soon the club's primary spearhead. He won his first club leading goalkicker award in

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

with 26 goals and was named forward pocket in that season's 22under22 team; he then led the club's goalkicking again in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season with 21 goals. He had a breakout season in

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

, serving as a deep full-forward. He was among the strongest contested marks in the league. He kicked 58 goals for the season to win the

by a four-goal margin, which was both the most goals and first Coleman Medal by a Carlton player since

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

. A natural left-foot kick, McKay favours taking set shots from the right side of the ground with a

perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the ''perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It can ...

run-up and snap kick, even from relatively narrow angles; he favours the conventional

drop punt The punt kick is a common style of kicking in Australian rules football. It is a kick where the ball is dropped from the players' hands and kicked slightly off the longer center line of the ball before it hits the ground. It is the primary mea ...

from the left side of the ground.

Family

McKay is the

mirror twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...

brother of fellow professional footballer Ben McKay, who plays as a key defender at

North Melbourne North Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, north-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. North Melbourne recorded a population of 14,953 at the ...

. As of 2023, the two are yet to play an AFL game against each other despite eight years in the league, often as a result of one of the two being suspended or withdrawn late with injury, leading to internet jokes that they are the same player running a fake-twin gambit.

Statistics

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, , 10 , , 13 , , 21 , , 11 , , 103 , , 35 , , 138 , , 70 , , 23 , , 1.6 , , 0.9 , , 7.9 , , 2.7 , , 10.6 , , 5.4 , , 1.8 , - , scope="row" text-align:center ,

, , 10 , , 20, , 26 , , 30 , , 161, , 46, , 207, , 125, , 32, , 1.3, , 1.5 , , 8.05, , 2.3, , 10.35, , 6.25, , 1.7 , - , scope="row" text-align:center ,

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, COVID- ...

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2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

, , 10 , , 19 , , 45 , , 31 , , 169 , , 48 , , 217 , , 114 , , 25 , , 2.4 , , 1.6 , , 8.9 , , 2.5 , , 11.4 , , 6.0 , , 1.3 , - , scope="row" text-align:center class="sortbottom" colspan=3 , Career , 86 , 174 , 122 , 674 , 185 , 859 , 486 , 128 , 2.0 , 1.4 , 7.8 , 2.2 , 10.0 , 5.7 , 1.5

References

External links

* * * 1997 births Living people Twin sportspeople Carlton Football Club players Gippsland Power players Australian rules footballers from Victoria (state) Coleman Medal winners {{AFL-bio-1990s-stub