Senior coach Justin Longmuir shares the excitement surrounding Liam Henry heading into his debut, but he won’t place any of lofty expectations on the 18-year-old against Sydney at Optus Stadium on Saturday night.

To Longmuir, it’s just important that the small forward takes in the experience and builds into playing a full AFL game.

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“It’s exciting and he’s a highly talented young player,” Longmuir said.

“He’s going to take a little bit of time, he’s lightly built but we feel like he’s earnt his spot and I just hope he plays his role on the weekend and contributes to our forward line.

“He’ll probably be on the lower end (of game time against Sydney), because it’s his first game and it will take a while to get up to 80 to 90 per cent of AFL footy.

“That will allow him to play to his strengths and bring his speed into the game with a little bit lower game time.”

Longmuir has been proud of Henry’s work at training and in the gym after recovering from a dislocated knee injury playing for Christchurch in school football prior to the 2019 draft.

“He’s done a lot of work behind the scenes and he’s been fully training for about six to eight weeks now, so he’s got a good body of work behind him,” Longmuir said.

“He’s put on about five kilos and that was an issue early, not only because he was light in the contest but also…he’s had to do a lot of work to get his knee issues under control. To his credit he’s worked his backside off to get his strength up and get his fitness up.

“He’s a really composed young kid who has wanted this for a long time. His professionalism along the journey to get over his injuries and get himself back into the condition to be ready for AFL has been first class. I think he’s ready.”

Longmuir said he expects Henry to be the only inclusion for the clash, ruling out Jesse Hogan, who continues to grow his skillset in the backline at training.

“(Jesse’s) name came up at match committee but I feel like we’ll make the one change this week,” Longmuir said. 

“His attitude has been really good towards his footy. He’ll split his time between forward and back in the reserves against Sydney and he’ll get another opportunity to put his name forward.”