Giants’ leap of faith fell flat. Can they recover?

Viewers get to see what coach Leon Cameron knew was coming from the pre-season in documentary of the club’s 2020 implosion.

GWS Giants captain Stephen Coniglio had a rough 2020 season. Picture: Getty Images

The Giants dropped their new captain, Stephen Coniglio, for the penultimate round of the 2020 season, but they are adamant that the failings were as much theirs as his and have stuck with him for 2021.

Success validates almost everything and failure does the opposite, unfortunately for GWS the agonies of last year were recorded by a television crew and have made their way to the screen in recent weeks.

When the Sydney Swans put together the successful culture around the time of the 2005 premiership much was made of secret blood brother meetings which involved assigning bricks to players on pre-dawn beaches.

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In the new Prime Video documentary Making Their Mark the viewer knows with a sense of hindsight that things are not going to turn out well for GWS.

The club had finished in the finals four years running, let itself down in the 2019 AFL grand final but is expected to shape the finals again in 2020.

Coniglio is a key focus as he accepts the captaincy which has been given up by Phil Davis and Callan Ward after eight years sharing the role.

It looks a mistake from the first frames, but that might be hindsight — or clever editing.

He looks nervous, he sounds nervous and when coach Leon Cameron tells him the “spirit, the belief and the trust” has to come from the playing group and it is his job is to get the best out of everyone he heads off looking for a way to do that.

“You will find your own style,” Cameron tells him in the office. “We are chasing West Coast and Richmond, it is time to be great”.

Cut to the new captain unveiling a sculpture “Leap of Faith” which he places in the middle of the playing group. Reading from a prepared speech Coniglio says it speaks of the past, the present and the future.

Perhaps if they had won the flag or even made the eight it would not have made such awkward viewing.

If they’d won the flag maybe Leap of Faith would have been as celebrated as Sydney’s bricks, but they didn’t and it’s hard not to roll your eyes at the overreach.

Cameron told The Australian that Coniglio struggled but will get better if given support.

“The responsibility is on all of us for him to grow,” he said. “We are not just talking about him not having the greatest of years, that was the same for all of us, it would be unfair to dump it on one person.

“We are in it together and I firmly believe he can come out and improve his captaincy ever year he is in his role.

“It was an extraordinary set of circumstances last year that he faced first up, we are confident with the leadership group around him that he can produce good footy and become a good captain.

“For some captains it falls into place straight away, for others it takes longer.”

The Giants hierarchy believes the weight of the job had an impact on his form and his form made the job a heavier burden.

Cameron and his coaching staff may have been less surprised than everybody else at how the season 2020 panned out.

Giants head coach Leon Cameron. Picture: AFL Photos via Getty Images

After the round two loss to North Melbourne he identifies a key failing and lays it out in old fashioned football terms.

“We are not f..king working hard enough,” he yells. “We are a soft, ‘poor me’ footy club.

“I’ve got mids that don’t want to work hard and over the entire summer period young Tom Green, Jye Caldwell and Jackson Hately smashed our f..king mids all f..king summer and I was waiting for it to turn.

“This is not a f..king glitch ball this is set into the walls since the grand final …”

The midfield which was a problem in the pre-season remained a problem all season.

Jeremy Cameron (Geelong), Zac Williams (Carlton), Aidan Corr (North Melbourne), Zac Langdon (West Coast), Jye Caldwell (Essendon) and Jackson Hately (Adelaide) all left the club at the end of 2020.

The coach admits there is a sense of generational change with eight new players on the list this year and five from 2020.

“There’s 13 players in the space of two years and people are going to ask if it is a changing of the guard because of the players who have been there for eight or 10 years who have left,” he said.

“You can call it what you want it is what it is, there are new players, a new breed, some clubs have three we have a few more and we are excited to see them.”