GWS Giants groomed to be competitors and are ready for AFL success, writes Mark Williams

THE GWS Giants have been known to talk it up on the field. And former assistant coach MARK WILLIAMS says there’s a reason the AFL’s newest baby has attitude.

NOT too many winning teams are made up of choirboys.

When you are building a side to win premierships you want characters and you want competitors. Not robots and bland, beige players.

MARK WILLIAMS: THE DUSTY I KNOW

MARK WILLIAMS: HOW TIGERS HAVE IMPROVED

At Port Adelaide as we built towards a flag we recruited Josh Carr, Byron Pickett and Damien Hardwick.

The competitiveness of those guys rubbed off on everyone and they made sure we ended up as winners.

I was at the St Kilda-GWS contest several weeks back when Phil Davis pushed Rory Lobb as he demanded more from him.

He was roundly criticised by the media, with Toby Greene and Heath Shaw copping their share for their aggressive and vocal style of play.

To see Davis grabbing someone like that and dragging them into line reveals a leader trying to lead the best way he can.

His style might not be perfect but in football you need people who actually direct in that manner, not just sit by and let learning opportunities pass.

The Giants unapologetically play a hard, competitive and sometimes an outspoken brand of football.

It is a brand they believe will win them a premiership.

It was a tough start to the AFL for GWS, but Mark Williams thinks premiership success is within reach for Toby Greene and Steve Johnson. Picture: Getty Images

HUMBLE START

To fully understand the Giants, you have to rewind all the way back to those first days when we all set about creating a new club out of nothing.

Imagine you are 17 or 18 and have just left your family and friends and get dumped in a town that knows nothing of footy.

You end up in a little hideaway called Rooty Hill.

You are living together as a new family and have to travel to work as much as an hour-and-a-half on a chaotic highway when most players didn’t even have a driver’s licence.

The conditions were the worst I have ever seen in footy, and I was at the Brisbane Bears from day one and at Port Adelaide in its AFL infancy.

Players had no plush air-conditioned meeting room, just a cold empty room at the Rooty Hill RSL. Weight training was in a public gym and footy training was on, would you believe, a baseball diamond.

No spas, no pool, no indoor facility. At 11am every day we stood and listened to the Ode to the Fallen Soldier over the loud speakers.

I have still got a video of the initial group standing there at attention.

It was apparent early that although this group was brash and talented, they also had a whole lot of respect.

In the first couple of years we travelled to home games in Canberra in a bus and it wasn’t good for young bodies, it wasn’t good for routines, it wasn’t good for sleep patterns.

We would stop half way to Canberra at cafes and drive-through service stations to get something to eat and return, following the games, at 12.30am — tired, bashed and bruised. But still no complaints. It built resilience.

The Giants pause to remember the fallen at 11am on Remembrance Day in 2011 — their first official training session as a fully fledged AFL team at Rooty Hill.

TOUGH LOVE

Right from the start the game plan was all about hard, tough football — we trained to bring their competitive juices to the fore.

We designed an A-frame where you had to run in and hit a big tackle bag before you picked up the footy.

There were a lot of one-on-one contests, and all the fitness work was competitive and to an extreme standard.

I had been at Port Adelaide, so I knew all the up-to-date fitness benchmarks and GPS results.

I even posted Kane Cornes’ scores so players could try to beat them. Tom Scully, Adam Tomlinson, Greene, Adam Treloar and Dylan Shiel would all blow his records away within the first few weeks.

During match simulation players just went at each other and it was unbelievable to watch. They were marking their ground and sorting themselves.

My sister Jenny has a Masters in Psychology and completed her PhD thesis on personality traits of winning premiership coaches and X-factor players in the AFL.

These traits included people who were bold, driven, colourful, hardworking and resilient while helping to create an environment of care.

The personality traits that I saw from these GWS kids were exactly the ones you see in a champion team.

Callan Ward and code-hopper Israel Foleau at the Giants’ first official training session.

SHEEDS’ MESSAGE

Day one on the first slide on the first Powerpoint it started.

“Football is a competitive combat sport — one team wins, one team loses. You guys are winners.”

Kevin Sheedy as head coach and me as the senior assistant started building the players’ resilience — an us-versus-the-rest ethos.

I remember some people laughed at Sheeds when his first speech was broadcast on TV. He said the players should never allow people to push them around.

But that was the message we were emphasising all the time.

We had a player of the week award that was voted on for courageous acts and the reward was a statue of an Anzac soldier, carrying a fellow soldier, and was passed from one player to the next.

These young bold players also had colourful premiership heroes around them who could guide and show the way — Luke Power, Chad Cornes and Dean Brogan — and together with the leadership qualities of James McDonald, they received great early tutelage.

Now add Heater Shaw and Stevie J to the mix — what a melting pot of high achievers.

The Giants players had to endure criticism for their sledging when they were being beaten by 20 goals in those early years and took a little time to discover the fine line between disrespect and believing in yourself, but there is no book that betters life experience. No one gets it exactly right, all the time.

But in the scheme of selecting players, who wants to select completely bland, brickwall-type players, ones who don’t want to stand out?

GWS co-captain Phil Davis demands action. Picture. Phil Hillyard

FOLLOW PHIL

At the St Kilda-GWS game the Giants were ravaged by injury and the Saints ran over them late.

It was such a tough night for them given the lack of rotations and the politically correct public had a field day with some of their body language.

Yes players were pointing at each other. I saw aggression, direction and command.

Consider what has happened since that highly criticised occasion’ GWS has just won two close games in a row against Collingwood and Richmond.

That might just be because leaders like Phil Davis demanded action on the spot and then followed up afterwards behind closed doors.

Some things are more important in football clubs than what they look like to the public.

In last year’s preliminary final team there were 14 players that Sheeds and I began with. I was really proud to see how far they had progressed and humbled post game by their heartfelt approaches and thoughts from them and the parents that had entrusted their kids’ development to us.

Mark Williams says the added experience and leadership of Heath Shaw has further strengthened the Giants. Picture: Getty Images

ON THE MARCH

So where to now? Most say it is a just a matter of time but believe me, premierships are never guaranteed.

Port Adelaide finished on top of the ladder three years in a row before we finally won a premiership — it was bloody hard work.

Right from the start, players had swagger when they walked, when they talked, they had been winners as kids and saw no reason why they couldn’t be as adults.

They were never going to be satisfied with second best.

Right now GWS is ravaged by injuries and at some stage there comes a breaking point. But if they play as well as they can they will win the premiership.

And the lessons they learnt in those tough early days at the Rooty Hill RSL won’t have been forgotten.

But for those who say they have had everything handed to them, walk a mile in their shoes.

Watch out, here comes the Giants.

Originally published as GWS Giants groomed to be competitors and are ready for AFL success, writes Mark Williams