Injury forces Harley Reid to the sidelines for Coates Talent League matches

Reid was concussed while playing for the AFL Academy against Carlton's VFL team on Saturday.

The likely number one pick in this year's AFL National Draft, Reid was scheduled to play the next three weeks with the Bendigo Pioneers, starting with this Sunday's home game against the Geelong Falcons at the QEO.

"Our concussion protocols are 14 days, so he'll miss the next couple of games with us,'' Pioneers' coach Danny O'Bree said.

"We'll look to play Harley the third week for a game leading into the national under-18 championships."

The Pioneers haven't played for a month, but in that time Reid's status in O'Bree's eyes has grown significantly because of his development as a leader.

"His leadership in the past month has been off the charts,'' O'Bree said of Reid.

"We have a leadership group that meets every fortnight and what's come out of that over the past month has been unbelievable and Harley has led that.

"The snowball effect that drips through our program is really exciting.

"We won't have Harley on the field for the next two weeks, but he'll be around the group and provide that leadership."

O'Bree said Reid's leadership skills were just as important as his ability to win possession of the footy.

"I firmly believe a lot of people would have questioned our choice of Harley as captain,'' O'Bree said.

"A lot of people probably thought he was made captain just because he's an exceptional player.

"Not only did the players vote for him as captain, the staff voted for him as captain because they saw his leadership qualities. The process we went through was second to none.

"That's a credit to our program for wanting to make these players better.

"Everyone knew Harley was going to get drafted and it would have been easy for us to just drift through the year and be happy with the fact that Harley found his way to an AFL club.

"We've continually seen an improvement in Harley week-to-week. That is success to us whether he gets drafted or not.

"Being a better leader each week, being a better person each week is what our program values as success whether it's Harley Reid or any other player on the list."

The Pioneers go into Sunday's clash with the fifth-placed Falcons in fourth place on the ladder.

Reid will also miss the game against the 14th-placed Western Jets and will return to tackle the highly-rated Dandenong Stingrays on June 3.

Meanwhile, five Bendigo Pioneers players have made the final cut for the Victoria Country under-16 boys squad for the national championships.

Wil Bennett, Patrick Blake, Hunter Wright, Shaun Watson and Riley Dillon earned their way into state selection on the back of great form for the Pioneers and impressive trial efforts.

The under-16 titles begin with a clash between Victoria Country and Victoria Metro on Saturday, June 10 at Carlton.

The first round of fixtures will be played across four states, before all 10 teams converge on the Gold Coast where the final two rounds will be played from July 3 to July 7.

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