Hartley played 49 games over his six-year career with Essendon and Hawthorn and comes to the Lions having made three appearances at AFL level in 2021.
Nominating Seymour as his home club, Hartley will also play at VFL level next season — committing to Collingwood’s reserves’ side in a role that will see him progress his coaching with the club’s AFLW set-up over the summer.
Lions coach Ben Davey said it was a thrill to welcome a player of such quality to the club.
“It is very exciting, any time you can add someone that is coming straight off an AFL list into your group in Goulburn Valley football is going to make a massive difference and we are really happy to have Michael coming on board,” Davey said.
He explained the process of getting Hartley on board and his connection to the group at Seymour.
“A fair bit of work went into it but nothing too major, Michael has actually trained with us a couple times over the past few years and has been around the club at social events,” he said.
“He has a couple of really good mates at Seymour in Ben Clifton and Nick Dundon so he is up here a bit socially, so it was just the next step really in trying to help him out with life after AFL football, and he had a lot of clubs chasing him so to have him come to us is a fantastic result.”
Finishing third on the ladder with a record of 9-2 last season, this addition will help the young Lions group continue to grow as Davey explained how he would look to use the 198cm prospect on game day.
“He will likely slot in as a key back for us and we will also be able to throw him forward at some stages and push him up onto a wing, he is so flexible and will be able to play any part we need on the field,” he said.
“He is a really big presence on the field and is going to be really good for our young group because we are very young — so his guidance in that respect is going to be terrific for us moving forward.”
Off the field, Hartley will also have a big part to play in the Lions’ quest for the flag as he takes on an assistant coaching role to complement his work at Collingwood.
“He is on Collingwood’s VFL list, and he is going to be doing a bit of coaching there with their AFLW and AFL teams, he is keen to get into a bit of coaching so he will be doing some coaching with us as well as an assistant,” Davey said.
“Getting somebody out of the AFL system is going to really help (our coaching staff), he is going to have different ideas with set-ups and things so we will be making the absolute most of that.”
With pre-season set to kick off next week, Davey said his squad was raring to go, given the abrupt end to its promising 2021 campaign.
“The feel is they are very hungry, they feel a bit cheated by the year that they have missed, and they are highly driven,” he said.
“The majority of our list has hardly stopped training, so we have a great base moving forward and as we begin pre-season it is all about continuing to get better.”
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