Tough formative years at GWS Giants helped form close bonds which made Jeremy Cameron feel at home
In the formative years of GWS Giants, the club was handed some harsh reality checks. But an old-school post-match approach helped set the foundations for future success and make western Sydney home for stars such as Jeremy Cameron.
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The GWS Giants are the upside down, back-to-front football club.
Beers and bonding sessions followed early failure and sobriety came with success.
That’s what you get when you’re tasked with building a club from scratch.
GWS copped cricket-score hidings in 2012 and 2013, yet the team packed with teenagers and their families would pile into The Palace Hotel at Mortlake after every disappointment and connect over a few schooners.
It was an old-school approach from the AFL’s youngest team, but superstar Jeremy Cameron said the relationships those deliberate drinking sessions built have kept him in Western Sydney when plenty — including himself — thought he might return home to Victoria.
“We’d lose by 130 points but they’d always make sure we were back at the pub having beers after just to bond and build a strong bond with each other,” Cameron told The Daily Telegraph.
“You wanted to win, but if you look at the bigger picture, we were never going to. But the boys getting back and every weekend we’d be together making sure we enjoyed our time even if we were getting flogged.
“To be honest, when I first got to the club, you never think I’d be still here now.
“It’s a credit to the guys who started the club, particularly Craig Lambert and Gubby Allen and the way they ran things in the early days.
“I remember two nights a week every week we’d be over at Mel and Craig’s having dinner as 20 blokes. Lambo would just talk shit the whole time and you don’t realise it at the time, but that’s all the stuff that makes you feel at home.
“That’s what will take us forward.”
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In the fourth and fifth year, the beers were fazed out as the team got a taste for winning and chasing more success became more enjoyable than quenching a more immediate thirst.
Founding father Lambert says the investment of Allen and fellow officials, David Matthews, Kevin Sheedy and Gavin Robertson in making the Giants a family club — including beers at The Palace — is a huge factor in GWS now pushing for a grand final.
“After round one (in first year in the AFL, 2012) we played the Sydney swans at the ANZ stadium,” Lambert said.
“I reckon we literally had every single parent, uncle and aunty, they all came back to The Palace — all flying into the pub. We got beat by 50 points but I just remember looking around thinking, ‘this is magic.’
“The blueprint was always about welfare and family and guys like Jezza with his mum and dad … but you have to live it.
“I’m not involved in the club anymore. But whenever I go and watch you get to see the families at a Giants game and there’s still that special connection there which is pretty special.”
Originally published as Tough formative years at GWS Giants helped form close bonds which made Jeremy Cameron feel at home