2024 AFL Season Previews: Greater Western Sydney
Can the Orange Tsunami consume everything in its path?
I’m kicking off my 2024 season previews by looking at the eight teams competing in Opening Round. Let’s look at one of the stories of last season: the Giants.
2023 ladder position: 7th (13 wins, 10 losses – eliminated at the preliminary final stage)
2023 best-and-fairest: Toby Greene
Senior coach: Adam Kingsley
Story of the season
Probably the best way to describe expectations of how Greater Western Sydney would perform last season was “cautiously optimistic”. Adam Kingsley, a highly-rated assistant under Damien Hardwick at Richmond, was handed the reins after Leon Cameron was (belatedly, in this author’s opinion) relieved of his duties. Publicly, the club was bullish about their chances of success. But first-year coaches need some time to instil their game plan. And that’s what it looked like through the first 10 games of the season. The Giants showed a bit, but three wins (two of them by a combined total of three points) was a poor return. It looked like another year in nowheresville. Then, around the bye, the Giants exploded into form, winning a club-record seven games in a row, eventually finishing the Home & Away season in seventh spot. A team that won at 11 different venues throughout 2023 weren’t overawed by the prospect of travelling in September. They comfortably dispatched St. Kilda and Port Adelaide before falling agonisingly short to Collingwood in an MCG Preliminary Final. Adam Kingsley was rightly named Coach of the Year.
Summary of game style
At their best last year, the Giants offered a decent answer to the question, “what if Damien Hardwick’s Richmond side were slightly cleaner with ball in hand?” Their remarkable improvement in the second half of the season was driven by two interrelated things: their defence and their pressure. The Giants’ defensive line is the Platonic ideal of the modern AFL back six: dogged, dynamic, and flexible. Key backs Sam Taylor and Jack Buckley bring almost everything to ground. From there, versatile medium-sized defenders like Connor Idun excel at winning the ball and using their running power to start scoring chains. While the Giants love possessing the ball in general, they particularly love to handball – only Hawthorn did it more. Although clearances aren’t a major focus, strong inside midfielders like the outstanding Tom Green and Steven Coniglio ensure the Giants can usually halve the contest. Adam Kingsley’s key tactical innovation was the use of “high half-forwards” Toby Bedford and Brent Daniels, who led the press from the front, harrying opposition defenders and facilitating turnovers in dangerous parts of the ground. For now, the Giants excel at Richmond-style pressure and turnover football. But they’ve got several strings to their bow.
List changes
In:
Phoenix Gothard (2023 National Draft, pick #12)
James Leake (2023 National Draft, pick #17)
Joseph Fonti (2023 National Draft, pick #44)
Harvey Thomas (2023 National Draft, pick #59)
Nathan Wardius (2023 Rookie Draft)
Out:
Matt Flynn (free agent – West Coast)
Jason Gilbee (delisted)
Cameron Fleeton (delisted)
Phil Davis (retired [I definitely thought he’d already done so])
Daniel Lloyd (retired)
List profile
Number of top-10 draft picks: eight (fifth-most)
Average age at Opening Round: 24.2 (sixth-youngest)
Average number of games played: 64.7 (sixth-fewest)
Unsurprisingly, given their strong showing last year and overall list health, GWS didn’t make many changes throughout the off-season. They’re pretty much where you want to be in terms of list construction. If a Giants fan summoned a magic genie, they'd probably wish that Toby Greene and Stephen Coniglio were five years younger. But they and other veterans are still performing, and players in the first half of their twenties are also stepping up to shoulder more of the load. Every line is a beautiful blend of youth and experience. Down back, guys like Sam Taylor and Connor Idun are perfectly complemented by Harry Himmelberg and Lachie Whitfield. In the middle, Tom Green has emerged as an A-grade contested midfielder just as you’d expect the likes of Coniglio and Callan Ward to begin declining. While up forward, the energy of Toby Bedford and Brent Daniels gives Toby Greene and Jesse Hogan more room to strut their stuff.
In addition to being in a great spot in terms of age and experience, GWS are testament to the virtues of needs-based recruitment. Hogan, Bedford, and Daniels were all brought in specifically to fill gaps. Similarly, GWS were adamant that their first pick in the 2023 National Draft, Phoenix Gothard, will thrive in Adam Kingsley’s pressure-based system.
Line rankings
Defence: Elite
Midfield: Elite
Forward: Above Average
Ruck: Above Average
The case for optimism
Sometimes, teams can win for reasons that are unsustainable in the long run. Their forward line might run unusually hot. They might get the rub of the green in terms of umpiring decisions. Or the opposition might miss easy shots on goal. But I subscribe to the idea that if your underlying numbers don’t point in the direction of winning games of football without the vagaries of randomness, then results will sooner or later regress to the mean.
From the outside, the Giants’ amazing run in the second half of the year looked like it might be one of those. Superficially, it fit the bill: a young team that made a poor start suddenly surging to an unlikely Preliminary Final. But then you peer closer, and you realise there was nothing unsustainable about it. Instead, a different picture emerges: the Giants spent the first two months of the season learning a new style. Once it clicked, they became one of the best sides in the competition.
The Giants’ re-emergence as a top team following a period of decline under Leon Cameron looks sustainable because rather than investing everything into a small number of strengths, they measure up well across several key metrics. They’re an excellent pressure team – but they had the third-most possessions of any team. We picture them sweeping up the field, Orange Tsunami-style, but they hold their own in contested possessions and clearances. They excel in ground ball gets and defensive one-on-ones. They’re just a good team that shows up statistically everywhere they should. It’s this strength across multiple areas that makes me more confident GWS will remain a contender than, say, Carlton, which excel at a smaller range of things. Clearly, most of the credit for the Giants’ rise is due to the outstanding work of Adam Kingsley. Taking a team at a low ebb to the brink of a Grand Final in your first season isn’t any less impressive just because Craig McRae did it the year before. On the field, the Giants look strong and cohesive. And off the field, they look like a much happier team. Perhaps the Making Their Mark documentary wasn’t a representative sample (and granted, it was made during the misery of Covid), but it didn’t paint a positive picture of Leon Cameron as a coach or people manager. The players looked bemused and confused – and it showed on the field. Vibes matter for fans. And I think they matter for players, too.
The end result of all of this is that, under Adam Kingsley, the Giants are up to their necks in flag contention. They have a talented list that’s playing fearless football and making fans out of neutrals. We measure success in terms of the destination – lifting the cup. But the journey matters, too.
The case for pessimism
Honestly, they’re hard to find. But dig deep enough, and some appear. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence for pessimism in 2024 is that some of the Giants’ most important players are approaching the age where you wouldn’t be surprised if their performance levels begin declining. Coniglio and Greene are both over 30 now, and Lachie Whitfield and Josh Kelly aren’t far behind. All four are key to the way the Giants like to move the ball upfield from their defensive 50. None are old, exactly, and none rely on line-breaking pace. But even a slight loss of step or reaction times can have an outsized impact on the field. Put it this way: Toby Greene was named Best & Fairest and All-Australian Captain in 2023. He’s involved in almost everything the Giants do forward of centre. If his performance level dips so that he’s merely very good instead of outstanding, how does that change what the Giants can do?
Another possible cause for pessimism is injuries – or, rather, the lack of them. Generally speaking, the Giants were fairly lucky with injuries to key players. The main exception was Sam Taylor. The 2022 All-Australian fullback missed eight games with two separate hamstring injuries. As soon as he returned to the team after the first one, the Giants embarked on their seven-game winning run. I fully believe the Giants’ style and success are sustainable. But it depends on the availability of their key personnel. The GWS defence last year was like a rubber band – it bent without breaking. Let’s hope Sam Taylor’s hamstrings work the same way.
The only other minor cause for pessimism I could find is that the Giants probably slightly overperformed last year based on the underlying numbers. Based on the Pythagorean wins formula, GWS were only the 11th-best team throughout the Home & Away season – although obviously this is skewed by their poor first two months. They were quite clutch in close games, winning four out of six decided by a goal or less. One fewer win, and they’d have missed out on the eight, and we wouldn’t have gotten the fairytale story that we did.
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Breakout player
One of the notable things about the Giants’ development is that they’ve become a very capable team without any noteworthy contributions from Aaron Cadman. That’s not a slight on him, by the way: very few key forwards make a big impact in their first year of AFL. He represents the biggest wildcard for the Giants this year. If he gets better, so will they.
Most important player
It’s a great credit to the other Giants players that I actually hesitated about this choice – but only briefly. It’s still their captain, Toby Greene. He is the ultimate Swiss Army Knife. He can mark on the lead. He can crumb and kick snaps. He applies pressure. He has outstanding footy IQ and seemingly always chooses the best option. If he’s not getting the ball inside attacking 50, he can drift up the field or even pinch-hit at centre bounces. Toby Greene is, to use the modern parlance, a problem. Sometimes for the GWS coaching staff. But more often, for the opposition.
Biggest question to answer
Can the Giants keep it up? Statistically, there’s no reason they shouldn’t. But footy is played on grass, not spreadsheets. A common theme from pre-season has been teams focusing on better delivery inside 50. The GWS defence eats long bombs for breakfast. If teams like Melbourne start improving their forward efficiency, they might start getting some indigestion (not convinced that analogy works, but whatever).
What success looks like
Sides that lose preliminary finals by a point have all the motivation they could ever need to take the next step. Kingsley has restored the standards that slipped under his predecessor. In order to maintain them, he should be aiming for at least another preliminary final berth.
In a nutshell
Last year, the Giants gave the competition a two-month head start and still almost caught everyone up. If they're switched on from Round 1, there’s no reason they can’t end 2024 as Premiers.
Agree? Think I’m a fool who’s biased against the Giants? Share your thoughts in the comments.