That football feeling is different to what the 26-year-old has experienced in the majority of his time at Newcastle United so far. He signed last summer from Leicester City as an attacker with a proven Premier League output and scored on his debut. By the end of September, he had been sidelined for what turned out to be a third of a year.
“Especially when you newly join a club, the last thing you need is an injury,” he shrugs. “You want to come in, hit the ground running, show everyone what you’re about and help the team out. Injury stops that, and you’re watching from the sidelines for a good few months. I’ve been biting at the bit to get back, to get back fit and help the boys out, and that’s what I want to do in the second half of the season.”
Barnes was born in Burnley in December 1997, a month before his father Paul – a frontman with a stellar Football League pedigree – left the Clarets to join Huddersfield Town. Barnes senior also turned out for Notts County, Stoke City, York City, Birmingham City and Bury. His son remembers watching the odd game he’d play for Tamworth as he wound down his career in the upper reaches of non-league after the family had returned to Leicester, where most of them hail from. “It wasn’t the pretty football of the Premier League, but it was just going and watching your dad play… it was great,” Harvey recalls. “You get a buzz as a kid, going to watch your dad.”
He never felt forced to follow his father into the profession and the photos of Paul’s playing days around the house didn’t weight him down. Instead he found something comforting about having someone so close who was well versed in “the little details” of the game they both happened to become professionals in.
“There are probably certain things you can only understand at a deeper level when you’ve actually been there and done it,” he says. “Of course the game’s changed since he was playing, but the principles are still the same so there was so much – especially when I was younger – that I could learn from him growing up. That transition from the academy and the boys’ side of things, to becoming a man and dealing with that side of the game – he definitely had a big help in that.
“He’s been through the highs and lows of football and he understands that for me there’s going to be highs and lows too, so he’s got a good understanding of how I’m feeling at certain times. He’ll tell me both sides of it, which I think as a player is important. You don’t always want to hear the good stuff – it’s the bad stuff as well.”
