Senior assistant coach Robert Harvey will add a touch of red to his Black and White stripes in April when he returns to St Kilda after being recognised as a Legend of the club.

The assistant to Nathan Buckley and 383-game former St Kilda midfielder will be presented as the Saints’ eighth ‘Legend’ in their 40-man Hall of Fame on Saturday 9 April.

After beginning his professional career at the age of 16, Harvey quickly became a favourite of St Kilda supporters and the greater football community.

He becomes a Legend after being inducted into the Saints’ Hall of Fame in 2013.

“It’s a huge honour. A few years ago now I was inducted into the St Kilda Hall of Fame, that was a great honour, so to be amongst names that have been through the club, you still don’t get used to it,” Harvey told the St Kilda website upon being recognised as a Legend.

“To be elevated to players like Ian Stewart, Tony Lockett, Darrel Baldock, they’re names that I still don’t get a grasp of.

“I was lucky enough to play footy with ‘Plugger’, I was coached by ‘Doc’ Baldock, for me they’re still names that you don’t get used to. So for me, it’s a huge honour.”

Harvey’s position as one of the best players in the competition was assured when he won back-to-back Brownlow Medals in 1997 and 1998.

Eight All-Australian nods and four St Kilda Best and Fairests added to the near-impeccable career of a man who stood alongside the likes of Nathan Buckley, Michael Voss and James Hird as the great midfielders of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Now a colleague of Buckley’s, Harvey is tasked with passing his wide array of football wisdom onto a Collingwood midfield full of potential.

He has been at the club since the start of Buckley’s coaching tenure in 2011 and in 2013 won the AFL Coaches Association’s Assistant Coach of the Year award.

Harvey still has a place in his heart for St Kilda, however he is firm in his allegiance to the Magpies.

“To spend so much time at one place and to put so much love in to one place it’s never going to leave you,” Harvey said.

“It’s always great to go back and obviously I’m in a different role at a different club so you’ve got your head in that as well.”