News Giants in the Media

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Article up today on the AFL website:

www.afl.com.au

Key Giant 'reborn' after overcoming debilitating health issue

GWS Giants defender Nick Haynes reveals the extent of the health issues that severely impacted his football in 2022
www.afl.com.au www.afl.com.au

Goes some way into explaining Haynes' poor/indifferent form last year.

However, it also exposes how dire the Giants' depth is.

If Haynes was in such a state, that means there wasn't anyone readily available in the reserves.

That is an indictment on the club on so many levels.
 

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MelbourneGWS said:
Our CEO was the only person to formally oppose the AFL locking in the Gather Round to SA for 3 years. His view was that it should have been held in Sydney to generate more fans and exposure to the code.

amp.theage.com.au

Gather ’round SA: New showpiece stays in Adelaide, despite Giants boss arguing Sydney the better bet

Giants CEO Dave Matthews made a passionate case for Gather Round to be held in Sydney to grow the game, but the AFL is sticking with holding it in Adelaide.
amp.theage.com.au amp.theage.com.au
Click to expand...
Meh, I do think it should be shared for all states but all for it being locked in for a few years, will be there next year now.
 
Must admit, I'm not sure. I do think it should be shared around, but I'll admit that they won't get the attendance in Sydney that they would in SA or WA. I also get that locking it in for a block of years will allow for things to be done - such as improvements to minor stadiums to make them better for future games. Plus and minus, overs and unders, yin and yang. Just the dick-measuring crap coming out of the mouths of politicians is so painful.
 
Giant Strides said:
Must admit, I'm not sure. I do think it should be shared around, but I'll admit that they won't get the attendance in Sydney that they would in SA or WA. I also get that locking it in for a block of years will allow for things to be done - such as improvements to minor stadiums to make them better for future games. Plus and minus, overs and unders, yin and yang. Just the dick-measuring crap coming out of the mouths of politicians is so painful.
Click to expand...

don’t underestimate the traveling fan. Gather Round will bring them in from everywhere. There are huge amount of local AFL fans, particularly of non-swans, non-giants teams already - add to that those from VIC, SA & WA that would make the trip just for the event itself and Gather Round in Sydney would be just as packed as Gather Round anywhere else would be.

also. You have to factor in that 3 crowds of 40,000 at the SCG is not 120,000 different people - with double headers & 3 game passes, it’s probably closer to 60-80k people. It’s the sort of weekend where a footy fan will go to 3 or 4 different games.
 
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Tonight's 'On The Couch' - 46 minutes in - praising Coniglio, Himmelberg, Taylor (especially) and the Giants' performance.

Awesome.

Not so the drive-by from Brown re: Sam Taylor - "Imagine if this bloke was playing for Collingwood or Carlton or one of those big teams."

VicMedia........
 
Section226 said:
Tonight's 'On The Couch' - 46 minutes in - praising Coniglio, Himmelberg, Taylor (especially) and the Giants' performance.

Awesome.

Not so the drive-by from Brown re: Sam Taylor - "Imagine if this bloke was playing for Collingwood or Carlton or one of those big teams."

VicMedia........
Click to expand...
Cogs was huge gone a bit under the radar, Taylor got much of the plaudits deservedly and HH had the insane mark but Cogs' pressure and ball winning was massive had 10 pressure acts in the last term.
 
Sam Taylor finally getting recognition for his elite work!




Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com
 

The historical statistics seeing star Giant draw Rance comparisons

“I think we’ll be looking and celebrating him as one of the best key defenders we’ve seen.”
www.sen.com.au www.sen.com.au

Some snippets from that interview:

“You look at what Sam Taylor’s doing, over the last two years, he’s the second-best player in terms of winning a one-on-one contest in the competition and he’s the hardest player to beat in a one-on-one contest.

“He lost his first one (one-on-one) contest of the year on the weekend.

“He’s been involved in 18 one-on-ones this year and he’s won 12 of them. No player has ever won 12 one-on-one contests out of 18, no one has ever done that.”

“His ball use is fantastic,” Hoyne said.

“One thing I also rate about him, like Alex Rance, he doesn’t get hidden. He’s played on Oscar Allen, Harry McKay and Darcy Fogarty.

“He’s playing on a team that’s getting bombarded with inside 50s week upon week and that team has conceded the fewest goals to key forwards in the competition – mainly because of the job he’s doing.

“Even though he’s 23, I look at him down the line in 10 years’ time, I think we’ll be looking and celebrating him as one of the best key defenders we’ve seen in the last 20, 30 or 40 years.”

Taylor also ranks first in intercepts and fourth in contested marks this season.
 
Giant Strides said:

The historical statistics seeing star Giant draw Rance comparisons

“I think we’ll be looking and celebrating him as one of the best key defenders we’ve seen.”
www.sen.com.au www.sen.com.au

Some snippets from that interview:

“You look at what Sam Taylor’s doing, over the last two years, he’s the second-best player in terms of winning a one-on-one contest in the competition and he’s the hardest player to beat in a one-on-one contest.

“He lost his first one (one-on-one) contest of the year on the weekend.

“He’s been involved in 18 one-on-ones this year and he’s won 12 of them. No player has ever won 12 one-on-one contests out of 18, no one has ever done that.”

“His ball use is fantastic,” Hoyne said.

“One thing I also rate about him, like Alex Rance, he doesn’t get hidden. He’s played on Oscar Allen, Harry McKay and Darcy Fogarty.

“He’s playing on a team that’s getting bombarded with inside 50s week upon week and that team has conceded the fewest goals to key forwards in the competition – mainly because of the job he’s doing.

“Even though he’s 23, I look at him down the line in 10 years’ time, I think we’ll be looking and celebrating him as one of the best key defenders we’ve seen in the last 20, 30 or 40 years.”

Taylor also ranks first in intercepts and fourth in contested marks this season.
Click to expand...
I really think there's a good chance he's going to be the best defender of the decade, still so young and already elite elite. Such a special player.
 
Hendo_21 said:
I really think there's a good chance he's going to be the best defender of the decade, still so young and already elite elite. Such a special player.
Click to expand...
he'd be a short price favourite for that already.

He is a chance to go down as an all time great if he stays fit.
 

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gee whiz giant said:
If further proof was needed that the AFL is really the VicFL, Access All Areas, the flagship review of the weekends action on AFL website, neglected to review Giants V Brisbane in any way. It's obvious that out of sight from Victoria is out of mind.
Click to expand...
Yup, not surprised. Often the last game reviewed, and/or the least depth to any review. Even my non-mainstream favourite media The Mongrel Punt has shat the bed with the quality of its GWS coverage - last week's game review didn't appear until much later than the rest of them!

They got the extra $ from the TV contract - otherwise, they don't give a shit.
 
Code sports have a story on the Giants -

Greater Western Sydney’s plans to boost Sydney crowds and broaden market share​

As the AFL prepares for the introduction of its 19th club, its 18th is still trying to find its way. DANIEL CHERNY looks at what the Giants are trying to stand for.

Anyone able to access this?
 
Was able to get it from the Giants fan page

An Essendon board director dined this week with a group including a Sydney Swans academy coach and the Greater Western Sydney chief executive.
Strange, at first glance.
But there was nothing untoward, no sense of subterfuge. Rather it was the first time the Giants’ group of life members convened formally.
A table for 20 assembled at a nice Sydney restaurant for the occasion. Giants chief Dave Matthews was there. That Swans academy coach is Leon Cameron, who this time last year was still at the helm of GWS. And the Bombers director? A bloke by the name of Kevin Sheedy, Cameron’s predecessor as coach and after whom the Giants’ best and fairest is named.
Among the apologies were Jeremy Cameron, still welcome despite moving to Geelong, Adam Kennedy who had to see a knee specialist after his season-ending injury at the weekend and the extraordinary Cora Staunton, the Giants’ recently-retired AFLW star, back in her native Ireland.
While the Giants have reached an age where they can draw a crowd for such an occasion, so too do they remain an immature entity in many respects.
As the AFL prepares for the addition of its 19th club, its 18th, and 17th for that matter, are still fledgling.
Once viewed with hostility and suspicion by the Swans, the Giants’ ability to compete for much of the past decade has at least won them on-field respect from their cross-town foes, a rivalry legitimised by several finals clashes.
“The collaboration off-field with the Swans is important, but the competition on-field is absolutely critical. The derby is a key platform for us,” Matthews says ahead of the latest instalment at the SCG on Saturday.
At face value, the Giants are making reasonable off-field progress in some respects.
GWS has had more than 30,000 members for each of the past four seasons, a figure boosted by the club’s secondary base in Canberra, where the club has consistently drawn crowds of around 10,000.
The grind has been much tougher in GWS’ primary market of … Greater Western Sydney.
The Giants have not drawn a five-figure crowd to their Homebush base at Giants Stadium base since 2019. Several factors have come into play.
The pandemic hit GWS disproportionately. Where Queensland, Western Australia and even Tasmania all received influxes of bonus marquee matches (including grand finals) because of border closures, NSW was wiped out for the best part of two seasons.
But unlike Victoria, GWS did not have the muscle memory of fans to fall back on.
Nor did it help that when they finally returned home for a proper allotment of games in 2022, the Giants finished the lowest they had since 2014.
“What Covid really meant for us was it took it out of our market. I know that Victorian clubs were obviously out of their market as well, but they’ve got 150 years of generational support,” Matthews says.
“After the 2019 Grand Final, we had every reason to be very ambitious and optimistic about 2020 on and off the field. To basically be out of the market for two years and also be out of the Canberra market was very difficult.
“One of the things we’ve learnt from the Swans is to establish your brand in this
market you need to try to defy gravity and win.”
There are some other levers to pull though. Matthews is keen for the AFL to provide some assistance to GWS on the fixture front.
“The trick is for us and the AFL to settle on some better fixturing that enables our members and local footy participants to access games more readily,” Matthews adds.
“Our best timeslot in Sydney is 4.30pm Saturday. One of the things that the AFL have done cleverly in terms of its participation programs is schedule the majority of junior football on a Sunday.
“But a consequence of that is any time we play on a Sunday, the low-hanging fruit of junior AFL participants is generally otherwise occupied.
“Recognising the fixture constraints that there can be, for clubs like the Swans and the Giants the needle moves a lot bigger and faster with fixturing than it might do for Melbourne clubs that are pretty entrenched.”
As the club struggled with performance and crowds in 2022, chairman Tony Shepherd floated the idea of the club playing a match at the SCG against a higher-drawing Victorian side.
For Matthews, it is all part of a broader strategy of innovation. A club like GWS
cannot be afraid of trying things.
But there are no plans to stray from its core constituency.
“Greater Western Sydney Giants is absolutely who we are,” Matthews says.
“We want to be the AFL team for the people of Canberra. We want to be the Giants of Parramatta, the Giants of Blacktown, the Giants of Penrith.
“It’s probably an ongoing discussion as to how Greater Western Sydney gets defined, because as Sydney continues to grow and develop, we’re looking to develop fans all across the city, with our primary focus being Western Sydney.
“We don’t see any fan boundaries though. We welcome fans from all over Sydney, all over Australia.”
He remains broadly optimistic, despite some of the challenges.
“We’re still in many ways a start-up organisation. We’re still a club that is quite mature in some areas and yet to mature in others.
“I think everybody’s been talking about it as a generational challenge, and it is. But we still think the trajectory is there.”
 
selkie said:
“Recognising the fixture constraints that there can be, for clubs like the Swans and the Giants the needle moves a lot bigger and faster with fixturing than it might do for Melbourne clubs that are pretty entrenched.”
As the club struggled with performance and crowds in 2022, chairman Tony Shepherd floated the idea of the club playing a match at the SCG against a higher-drawing Victorian side.
For Matthews, it is all part of a broader strategy of innovation. A club like GWS
cannot be afraid of trying things.
But there are no plans to stray from its core constituency.
“We don’t see any fan boundaries though. We welcome fans from all over Sydney, all over Australia.
Click to expand...
Again with the SCG fixture….. a great way to show the people who of WS that the club isn’t WS. 🤦‍♂️

They keep saying we are Western Sydney and then go on to say we don’t see us having fan boundaries and wanting games outside of WS.

Can we please get some people who actually know the culture and people of WS onboard so ridiculous ideas can be canned?
 
General Giant said:
Again with the SCG fixture….. a great way to show the people who of WS that the club isn’t WS. 🤦‍♂️

They keep saying we are Western Sydney and then go on to say we don’t see us having fan boundaries and wanting games outside of WS.

Can we please get some people who actually know the culture and people of WS onboard so ridiculous ideas can be canned?
Click to expand...
At no point did Matthews bring up the SCG there.
It won't happen, I wouldn't worry about it....or the Canberra move.
It's Western Sydney that the AFL wants. They all know it takes time.
 

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