- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The handling of expansion by the AFL in the past has generally been pretty successful.
The Swans and Lions both left critics red faced when they took off in non-heartlands and now it looks as if the Suns have carved out a sizeable niche up on the Gold Coast.
But the seeds the AFL have sewn in Western Sydney seem to not be blooming in the way the AFL might have liked.
Maybe I don’t have the capacity to comprehend the brilliance of the GWS’s strategy, but looking as an admitted outsider there are a few peculiar things about the club.
1) They’re not playing out of Blacktown
I used to take the train to school past Blacktown International Sportspark, the first imprints the Giants made were in the raising of the goalposts next to the train line.
When the Giants were announced I assumed they would be playing out of that general area.
I mean Greater Western Sydney, that’s gotta be at least to Blacktown, right?
Their main home ground in Homebush is a disappointment in itself.
A team with money to burn and years to wait decides not to build itself a decently sized stadium in what has been a ‘hole’ in the Western Sydney sporting landscape but to upgrade a small boutique stadium next to an already existing larger ovular stadium.
For a generational project I would’ve hoped for a little more ambition.
Put the seeds down in a real tribal home which locals could identify with as specifically GWS territory. The base in Homebush does little to help identify GWS from its rival who has already made considerable inroads into Western Sydney.
The less said about the Canberra dual occupancy the better.
2) The branding is off
To put it bluntly Greater Western Sydney sounds like something off of the front of a street directory. It isn’t really a geographic area that the local populous can really relate to.
Sure a lot of people can relate to the traditional ‘westie’ archetype and identify as living in ‘the west’ or ‘western sydney’ but the addition of greater on the front makes the title a mouthful and feels detatched from the general area.
The moniker, for what it’s worth, caps of the mouthful nicely so good job to whoever came up with that one.
The colours though in my view – and this may just be a personal gripe – don’t suit the area very well at all.
The colours aren’t themselves bad, they work as a scheme reasonably well (if a bit bland).
As a whole the team feels like the AFL just put a bunch of details about a new team into a machine and it pumped out this.
I feel the branding hasn’t done enough to differentiate GWS as a uniquely western Sydney team.
These colours and the moniker could have been used anywhere for any new team and be similarly inoffensive yet non-engaging.
3) A team without direction
The Giants current promotional strategies have also raised a few eyebrows.
Going into their first AFL season with an incredibly poor roster they decided to nab one of the rival code’s biggest stars. As we now know, the Israel Folau experiment was a failure.
The franchise built up considerable hype before its first game for what ended up being a shellacking, a pretty foreseeable one too.
Clearly someone in the GWS marketing department wasn’t paying complete attention at the teams planning meeting, which gives the impression that the club has little idea what it is trying to do.
The Folau fiasco gives the impression to the public that the club cares more about image than results, which is a very poor message to send.
If the AFL is going to plant a tree to sprout over time it wants to plant one in and right area and which suits the environment.
There is an assumption that the franchise will grow because other AFL expansions have grown before it after enduring long hardships.
But those franchises had history, soul and were formed at least taking into account some of the local identity.
They were planted in rich soil and were plants which were tailored for their environments and they had capable controllers at the helm making responsible decisions about their clubs.
Can we say the same about the Giants?
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.