GWS’ inaugural coach Kevin Sheedy on the club’s early years and why Israel Folau could have been a success
In an exclusive grand final column, inaugural GWS coach Kevin Sheedy details how the AFL’s newest club was born and why he thinks Israel Folau could have become a successful AFL player.
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What is our reason for being here? That was the question we asked ourselves at the very beginning.
The journey of the Giants started long before the team played their first AFL match, when we all sat in a room and made decisions on everything from what our club name would be and what our colours were.
We started off trying to find out who we really wanted to be in approaching this situation in Western Sydney, with input from different groups of people and all our staff involved.
We were to build a brand that people in Western Sydney would love to have as a club, and how we were going to represent them.
There were plenty of heartwarming moments during this process that I will cherish. I visited the appropriately named Orange to do a footy clinic one day and all the kids showed up wearing the colour orange. And we hadn’t even played an AFL game yet. It was just amazing to see.
Australian football is a sport of athletes who are fast, furious, powerful, resilient, and they jump, run, and kick — we had to promote that, and why someone should want to play our game.
We ended up going with the name Giants because it was more about the notion of creating a hero of Western Sydney who had boundless ambition, tireless enthusiasm, and fearless self-belief.
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We dared to think like Giants. We wanted something authentic that we could use to lift AFL quickly and intelligently into the hearts and minds of people in western Sydney.
Then, it came time to play.
Most people forget we started in the NEAFL in 2011, and we were beaten by most clubs then. We actually hold the record for biggest loss in the competition when we were belted by 241 points by Brisbane in 2012.
It’s amazing to think that just four years later, we won our first piece of silverware when we beat Sydney in the 2016 NEAFL grand final at Blacktown — the same year we made the AFL finals for the first time.
The early days were tough in trying to equally build and on and off-field presence from scratch.
The signing of Israel Folau was important in keeping an interest early. He rocked the boat and created $12 million worth of publicity, which was a brilliant marketing opportunity.
I still believe today that he would have been a wonderful AFL player if he had stayed longer. He was the best marketing tool we had, because without him, how could you promote 45 year 12 students to millions across the country?
I joke all the time that in those early days I was the highest paid under-19 coach in the world.
The difficulty was the AFL wouldn’t let us have player names on our guernseys so players could be recognised by the locals, and I thought that was foolish. These kids back then weren’t known to anyone.
Over the years, we saw players leave. When you look back at what the Giants have traded back to other clubs, there is over 2100 combined AFL games experience of the players who are still playing in the AFL right now.
Melbourne clubs never stop whinging about getting players back. Well, you got them back, and the Giants are still in a grand final.
It’s been a wonderful job done by all the staff there today, by Leon Cameron and his coaching staff, David Matthews and the ever-experienced Tony Shepheard to guide the Giants to the biggest stage of them all.
We dared to be different to give kids in NSW another chance to play AFL.
To get there as quick as we could we unfortunately had to lose a lot of games. As coach, I lost 41 of my 44 games.
The player’s bodies just couldn’t hold up. These kids’ bodies were not strong enough to win games of AFL, so I only judged them on the first half of a game — an hour. I never judged them on that last hour.
That was difficult for head office to believe in. I ran my own scoreboard where we tracked where we were at halftime of every match, and rate players on that.
Our best result in our debut season was in Round 10 when we were level with Geelong down at Kardinia Park, who were the reigning premiers at that time. I’ve never heard a silence at halftime like that in my life.
We had to rest about four players every few weeks — and bring in four debutants — because their bodies were tired. Overall, 32 players on our list made their AFL debut in 2012.
Some of those losses were big. But they are the best 41 losses I’ve ever had in my life.
No professional sporting team would have ever gone through what we did.
But we dared to be different. At the end of the day, the risk you take is to not take a risk at all.
Originally published as GWS’ inaugural coach Kevin Sheedy on the club’s early years and why Israel Folau could have been a success
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