Numurkah’s Harry Moon chats about his journey from farming to Bushies to Vic Country
By the time most of his Murray Bushrangers teammates are wiping sleep from their eyes and dragging their schoolbags out the door, Harry Moon has already been up for hours.
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He’s fed a paddock’s worth of cattle, checked the troughs and probably fixed something.
It’s safe to say Moon is not your typical Coates Talent League prospect.
At 17, he’s already two years in to full-time work as a dairy farmer on a property near Kaarimba, 20km south-east of Numurkah, where his days begin about 5am and rarely finish before dusk.
Yet, when the weekend rolls around, he trades gumboots for footy boots, lining up as a resolute, quietly effective defender for the Bushrangers.
“We always lived on a farm. Dad’s parents dairy farmed and then we bought a dairy farm in Numurkah in 2015 and we dairy farmed there for five years,” Moon said.
“We sold up a couple of years ago and that’s just all I wanted to do — dairy farm.
“So I started working on some family friends’ dairy farm out at Kaarimba and just haven’t looked back since.”
There’s groundedness in the way Moon speaks and plays.
At 196cm, Moon covers the key defensive posts with a minimum of fuss.
He’s not flashy, but he’s rarely beaten and it’s that kind of consistency that has Moon written as one of the first names on the Bushrangers’ team sheet.
It’s also borne two appearances for Victoria Country’s under-18 side in the AFL National Championships, marking a meteoric rise for someone who was barely blinking on the Talent League radar nine months ago.
This is Moon’s first full year in the Bushrangers system — bar two games for the club’s under-16s in 2023 — but his arrival has come after years of being thrown into the deep end.
He made his senior debut for Numurkah in Murray Football League at just 14, a baptism of fire that shaped his game — and his mindset.
“Oh, it’s a lot more physical,” he said of playing senior country footy.
“You learn a lot from it. Just super physical footy.”
Playing the majority of his juniors at the Blues, Moon's journey to the Bushrangers wasn’t strictly linear.
Last season was marred by two broken collarbones and just eight games played.
He shifted to Rochester for a fresh start, where his game — and his belief — quietly found new ground.
“I wasn’t too sure even if I wanted to carry through and play footy this year,” Moon said.
“I wasn't too sure how Bushies would go, so I made the change out to Rochy, which is where I grew up and played a lot of footy.”
He shouldn’t have worried.
Moon has played eight out of the 10 Bushies games this season, featuring once for Rochester’s under-18s as well as two cameos in the Big V.
When the 17-year-old was selected for his first Vic Country hit-out in the National Under-18 Championships earlier this year, it didn’t rattle him.
“It was a great experience,” he said.
“I think I adjusted to the level pretty well. I was just trying not to think about it too much and go play your role and do your job.”
That’s Moon in a sentence.
No fuss. Just task completion.
And there’s little doubt those early mornings, long days, and physical labour have forged a footballer who doesn’t shy away from the contest.
His goals are simple, but earnest.
“Just to keep progressing and take (footy) as far as I can,” he said.
“As long as I keep improving every week and putting the work in — get my body right, get my mind right — it’ll all just follow through.”
Inside the Bushrangers program, he’s settled in quickly.
While the step-up in intensity has been real, he arrived with a head start in one key department: data analysis.
“Numurkah did a lot with Premier Data, so all that data stuff was pretty familiar,” he said.
“Analysing your own data and watching your game over — just doing the reviews and stuff, (there are) lots of good tools.”
At the moment, there’s no talk of draft buzz or long-term ambitions.
For Moon, progress is measured in habits, not hype.
His favourite moments on the field are telling: not awards or goals, but a best-and-fairest win during a year spent in Port Macquarie, and the fact that he’s still here, playing the game.
Whether it’s milking cows at dawn or spoiling a pack at a windswept regional oval, Moon has no trouble rising.
And in the unpredictable, often glamour-obsessed world of Talent League football, that might be his biggest strength.
Sports editor