MARK Harvey says he still has a burning desire to coach an AFL club into a Grand Final.
The former Fremantle coach also hasn't ruled himself out of contention for the vacant Melbourne coaching job.
The 48-year-old, an assistant coach at the Brisbane Lions for the past two seasons, was in charge of the Dockers for five seasons until he was sensationally sacked in favour of Ross Lyon at the end of 2011.
Asked about the Demons coaching position on radio station SEN, Harvey left the option open.
"I've been through it. The question is whether you want to go through it again and put up with a lot of the crap that goes on at times," he said on Sunday night.
"Coaching's a fascinating thing. I like to coach young players particularly and try to get the best out of them.
"I guess in time Melbourne will work it out, but there's obviously a number of other candidates that have been successful coaches that they're looking at first."
Harvey feels he has unfinished business as a coach.
"I would've like to have coached Fremantle for the last two years and seen what would have happened if I was there," he said. "I knew exactly where we were going, and they haven't made too many changes there to the playing list (since).
"We beat Hawthorn in a final in 2011 and that gave me extraordinary satisfaction as a coach just to know that we were heading in the right direction.
"Ultimately as a coach you'd love to get to Grand Final day and really find out what it's all about, and I guess that's still a burning desire."
He said the scrutiny of being an AFL coach didn't faze him.
"My sacking or delisting, whatever you want to call it, happened as a bit of a surprise so I wasn't copping the constant pressure from the media … Everyone understood where we were at, (that) we had a number of injuries in that year," he said.
"When you coach at senior level, you're thick-skinned and you're resilient; you have to be. So I know what to expect."
Harvey suggested Melbourne would need to appoint "a very strategic coach" who ensured the club was well managed from a list management perspective "to rebuild them because it does need a lot of attention".
He also gave an insight into the treatment he received from Fremantle's management.
"It was the most difficult time as a coach in your first three years when your management and your board say, 'We're just going to the draft, we're going to rebuild this list,' and for three years you have between six and 11 first or second-year players in your team, and you're doing the hardest travelling test every second week from Perth," he said.
"We went through some tough times and it would have been good to see the reward of all that."
