By Vince Rugari
Friday night’s Sydney derby promised plenty and delivered even more.
This one had it all: spite, scuffles, slick ball movement, long-range bombs from scarcely believable angles and distances, big key forwards clunking marks, an almighty vibe shift, a heavy and concerning concussion inside the first 30 seconds, followed by a six-minute delay ... oh, and some cheeky half-time fat-shaming.
Toby Greene of the Giants tackles Sam Wicks of the Swans.Credit: Getty Images
That last one might get Toby Greene in trouble, if the AFL’s paper-pushers are feeling particularly zealous this weekend.
As he walked off the field at the end of the second term, the Giants skipper was asked about Tom Papley by Fox Footy’s Ben Dixon, and said: “He’s looking overweight … [let’s] see how he goes in the second half.”
At that point, the Swans were 28 points up, thanks to a run of six unanswered goals across the first two quarters, and Papley – making his return from a hamstring injury – was being a pest as per usual, celebrating his goal and all the others they scored in the face of whichever opposition players happened to be nearby. That was Greene on more than one occasion.
Having burrowed his way under the Giants’ skin, Papley had seemingly made his way into their heads and set up camp. Were they that rattled, that Greene would say something that loose (even by his standards) on live television?
His comments loom as a great test case of the AFL’s relentless policing of language and behaviour. Speaking post-match, neither coach had much of an issue with it – Swans coach Dean Cox only said Greene was a “calculated” boundary-pusher – and Greene himself sheepishly dodged direct questioning about it. Head office’s opinion remains to be seen; they’ve given out fines for less.
Greene certainly could have been a bit more polite, but perhaps he was onto something: Papley had only three touches in the second half.
Speaking of words. There were none on the banner that the Giants ran through before the match. It was left blank, reflecting their newfound approach to derby week: no sledging, no media games, no funny buggers, just footy.
“We don’t need to be winning any verbal battles,” coach Adam Kingsley said. “We need to be winning the physical battle out in the field.”
The Giants run through their banner during the round 20 AFL match against the Sydney Swans.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
But they weren’t in the first half - and so Kingsley had plenty of words for his players at half-time, which probably made Greene’s chat for Papley sound like child’s play.
Kingsley delivered what some Giants types have described as one of the biggest sprays they’d ever seen in the game, singling out the team’s underachievers in ruthless and confronting style.
“Oh, just reminders around the way that we want to play and asking certain players to lift their output, really,” Kingsley said.
It worked.
The Giants booted 12 of the next 13 goals to ruthlessly and brutally kill off the contest, as well as their rivals’ season. They restricted the Swans to only one goal after half-time, and that was in the third minute of the second quarter.
Tsunamis don’t get much more orange than that.
Finn Callaghan provided the spark, shaking off James Jordon’s hard tag and bouncing in the first goal of the third quarter from inside the centre square - but there were at least three and possibly more aesthetically pleasing goals to follow, particularly those late in the term from Harry Himmelberg, Lachie Ash and Jake Stringer, which they landed from increasingly ludicrous locations.
Giants head coach Adam Kingsley.Credit: AFL Photos
It was like watching a highlight reel from an entire season, condensed into about five minutes.
“It felt like almost everything our forwards touched and turned to gold … but I think that’s the capacity that we have,” Kingsley said. “Our guys know that we have that. We just need to deliver it a little more than what we have, and I think we’re building towards that.”
In the end, they won by 44 points, 15.12 (102) to 8.10 (58) - a 79-point turnaround from Sydney’s biggest lead early in the second quarter. It was their first derby victory after five consecutive losses to the Swans.
The early incident involving Isaac Heeney and Toby Greene.Credit: Fox Footy
Cox had warned his players throughout the week about the Giants’ ability to score quickly, and how important it was that they acted fast to stop them. They failed miserably. They had no answers. But when GWS plays like that, what team would?
The loss of Hayden McLean (concussion) in essentially the first play of the match in an accidental collision with Giants defenders Sam Taylor and Jack Buckley, and then Joel Hamling (hamstring) after half-time, robbed them of two of their bookends, disrupting their structure.
But Cox wasn’t having any excuses.
“We still had a really good footy team,” he said. “We played the footy we did in the first half with the same team. The disappointing part was the second half and the way we played.”
The Swans’ remote finals hopes are now done for – if not yet mathematically, then certainly realistically, thought Cox still wants his players to have an honest “throw at the stumps” in the final weeks of the season. “One thing we need to do is to make sure that we can build as much as we possibly can towards the back end for pre-season and for next year,” he said.
The Giants, on the other hand, can dream big. A top-four finish is still possible.
“When we play our way … we’re a pretty good team, I think,” Kingsley said.
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.