AFL Grand Final 2022: Toby Greene opens up on his September experiences and the Giants exodus

It’s disappointing, but understandable in the eyes of Toby Greene. In an exclusive column, he sheds light on why the Giants are losing three stars.

GWS Giants players Jeremy Cameron and Toby Greene dejected in the rooms after losing to Richmond in the 2019 AFL Grand Final at the MCG. Picture. Phil Hillyard

I remember looking at Jeremy Cameron halfway through the third quarter of the 2019 grand final.

The ball wasn’t coming down to our forward line too often. I said to him, “Mate, we’re in a bit of trouble here. There’s not much we can do about this”.

I think he said: “This is f***ed.”

The first quarter panned out how we’d planned. We wanted to turn it into a tight contest and a stoppage game, but the Tigers were bloody good that day.

When you’ve got 100,000 people at the MCG and 80,000 of them are Richmond supporters, they certainly rode that momentum and we just felt like we couldn’t do anything about it in the second half.

In hindsight, we had a few boys that definitely weren’t 100 per cent. I didn’t know that at the time.

It’s not until the weeks after that you find out what the boys were carrying. Phil Davis was one we all knew, but there were a few more as well.

When the final siren goes you’re obviously pretty flat, and a bit embarrassed. You want to just walk off the field and not talk to anyone.

But you can’t. You’ve got to hang around for the ceremony.

Toby Greene after the 2019 grand final loss to Richmond Picture: Ryan Pierse/AFL Media

It was a disappointing result, but it was also one of the better months of my life.

When we won the preliminary final against Collingwood, we flew home that night and the plane ride back to Sydney was pretty funny.

You would’ve thought we’d all had 25 beers.

We were carrying on and singing songs and there was a lot of energy.

We’d tailor songs to different players and I think most of the passengers were pretty happy for us to carry on a bit.

I’d imagine the Geelong and Sydney boys’ phones would have been going crazy this week.

It becomes a bit annoying, actually. I had well over 100 people sending their best wishes and hoping that you go well.

But you don’t want to get stuck on your phone wasting time and energy and so my advice would be to just reply in a week or two.

Grand final week is different to any other football week.

It’s funny, at the 2019 parade we were playing Richmond and so I was just getting hounded for 30 minutes.

I wanted the car driver to go a bit quicker to hurry it up, but it was pretty cool seeing that many footy fans in the city.

The night before the game is when you’re most tense. You feel a few nerves and may overthink things.

Green and former teammate Jeremy Cameron at the grand final parade. Picture: David Crosling

Greene, pictured arriving in Melbourne for the decider, says it was a ‘crazy’ week. Picture: Scott Barbour

On the morning of the game, I went for a walk to get a coffee and had a lot of people coming up wishing you good luck.

When you’re not in the finals you’re pretty flat for the whole series, and when we’ve lost prelims or semi-finals you’re super flat.

You don’t really want to watch the grand final. You don’t want a bar of it.

I remember being at a boat party in Sydney when the Tigers won in 2017 and something similar in 2016 when the Bulldogs won.

I couldn’t watch the footy and I didn’t want to hear about it either.

But this year we were nowhere near it. We weren’t playing finals, so you’re not as jealous.

We’ve got a bit of work to do to get back there because we were a fair way off it this year.

I’m looking forward to getting Adam Kingsley in as the new coach and there’s going to be a fair bit of change at the footy club.

There’s obviously a couple of players leaving that I’m flat about.

I probably knew a couple of them were going to happen. It just had to with the way our list looked – we had eight or nine midfielders running around this year.

It’s disappointing, but understandable.

Greene understands Tim Taranto’s decision to leave. Picture: Phil Hillyard

Timmy Taranto and Jacob Hopper have been there a while and they’re maybe victims of the midfield and understand the opportunities they get that we couldn’t accommodate.

Tanner Bruhn is a good kid. He shows a lot of training but it probably just hasn’t transferred into a game yet. But I’m sure that’s not too far away.

I definitely tried to help Tanner this year, I’m pretty close with him. He talked about his future a couple of times throughout the year and he was just torn on what to do.

Bobby Hill is a disappointing one as well, but it’s part of football.

So we’ve got to make some good deals during the trade period and build up next year to try to get back to finals and then go from there.

There’s no guarantees and there’s a lot of hard work.

We were super disappointed with this year, but I’m confident we can bounce back.

Originally published as AFL Grand Final 2022: Toby Greene opens up on his September experiences and the Giants exodus