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At the end of most weekends, I take a moment to reflect on how lucky I am to live in a country like Australia – a country that loves sport as much as I do.
This weekend alone we saw two major upsets in the NRL, with the Tigers defeating the Broncos on Friday night, and the Dragons edging out the Cowboys on Saturday.
In AFL the Adelaide Crows ended the Greater Western Sydney Giants’ six-game winning streak, while the Queensland Firebirds’ 21 wins on the trot were brought to a halt by the Swifts.
To cap off the weekend, our women’s rugby sevens team made history in France by becoming the first ever Australian team to win a World Series.
And it’s a State of Origin week this week!
I live in Sydney, so live sport is on my doorstep every weekend. Two weekends ago, I went to watch the Giants play on Sunday afternoon at Spotless Stadium, then on the Monday night I cheered on the Eels at Pirtek Stadium (despite there not being much to cheer about). Too much sport is never enough.
More AFL:
» Our game is too good for red cards
» AFL Power Rankings: Round 10
» The Roar’s AFL MVP: Round 10 votes, leaderboard
» Can Hawthorn win the flag without Jarryd Roughead?
The opportunity to not only watch NRL and AFL, but also netball and rugby union in winter, has always been something I have enjoyed, which is why articles inciting code wars frustrate me.
Tom Heenan, a teacher of sports studies at Monash University, wrote an article on the weekend, explaining why, despite the Giants’ on-field success in 2016 (currently sitting fourth on the AFL ladder, with seven wins and three losses), GWS will lose the code battle that Heenan would have you believe is currently being fought in western Sydney.
He went one step further, suggesting no one really cares about the Giants.
Sport has the capacity to unite people and to create a sense of community. Any attempt to undermine this community by inciting code wars is frustrating. I see no utility in it, because people can enjoy more than one sport. As long as people, particularly kids, are being active and enjoying sport, there are only winners.
The article is an unfounded attack on a Sydney-based team – a team which, over the last couple of months, I have fallen in love with.
I want to ask Heenan who the enemy is here? Is it the Giants, or is it the other codes in western Sydney that GWS are in competition with?
Let’s start with Heenan’s attack on membership numbers. The Giants have 12,780 members in 2016, numbers Heenan says “aren’t flash”.
Compared to what? Is it that they aren’t flash against the AFL clubs in Victoria, which have membership numbers spanning from 34,000 to 70,000? If that’s the case, the comparison is irrelevant, because sport is fundamentally different in Sydney than Melbourne and almost no club in Sydney (bar the South Sydney Rabbitohs) has membership numbers that even come close to those of the Victorian AFL clubs.
If we are waging a code war in western Sydney, surely it would be more useful to compare the Giants’ membership numbers to those of the Eels or Bulldogs, who only eclipsed 20,000 members for the first time this year. No surprises that GWS’s membership numbers are fairly consistent, if not slightly lower, than most of the other Sydney based teams (regardless of sport). A reasonable achievement considering how young the Giants are as a club.
Not only is it enough for Heenan to attack membership numbers, but he also attacks the Giants’ crowds, which have averaged 10,300 in 2016. Disappointing according to Heenan, but unsurprising due to the lack of success they have had on the field in recent years.
To someone in Victoria, to have just over 10,000 people at an AFL game might be considered a national embarrassment. In Sydney though, a crowd of that many is a reality. For example, while the Giants’ crowd for the game against the Western Bulldogs was 9612, in an overcrowded Sydney market where the sun was out, the NRL was on next door (a match which had a crowd of about 18,000), and the Giants were playing against a club with fans that do not traditionally travel. I was not surprised.
Nor was I surprised at the 17,000-person attendance at last year’s ‘Battle of the Bridge’ between the Swans and the Giants. 17,000 is a healthy Sydney sporting crowd and nothing to be ashamed of.
What I found most offensive about the article though was the suggestion that no one cares about GWS.
I want Heenan to come to a Giants home game and say that to the group of men and women who sit in the cheer squad. He could perhaps start with the young man who paints his face in a different design each week with the colours of grey, black and orange. Then he could speak to the mother and son who have been to every single Giants game since the club’s inception.
He might want to finish with the passionate man that leads the cheering, whose voice is hoarse and bare at the end of the game.
Do you know who else cares about the Giants? People that support women’s sport. With the AFL set to announce any day now which clubs will receive a licence to have a women’s team in 2017, the Giants were the only club in Sydney which put in a bid. The Swans did not have the resources, while the Giants’ continuing relationship with the Auburn Giants and their female academy program demonstrated their commitment to women’s football.
If the Giants are successful with their bid, Giants fans have two teams to call their very own and the team will become club of choice for people in Sydney who are passionate about women’s football. Not to mention GWS’s intention of partnering with a team for Australia’s new-look netball competition set to launch next year, which will generate even more interest in a growing club.
This suggests that the number of people who care about the Giants is only set to increase.
Heenan may also want to do his geography. The Giants are located at Homebush and find themselves very close to what is being described as the new centre of Sydney – Parramatta. Western Sydney is a growing region and spans as far as Penrith, to Campbelltown, to Blacktown, to Parramatta to Homebush.
Tom, you can stomp your feet and raise your voice about how the Giants will never be successful in Sydney, pointing at their smallish crowds and membership numbers. Meanwhile, I’m going to have some fun and continue to love sport. I’ll love my NRL and the Parramatta Eels. When the Eels and Giants don’t clash, I’ll head to Spotless to watch Phil Davis, Jeremy Cameron, Stephen Coniglio, Callan Ward and Adam Tomlinson, who have been with GWS since the beginning, much like many of their fans, who really do care about the squad.
And let’s chat again in ten years, because only then can the long-term project named the GWS Giants be judged. I’ll give you a hint though, get used to the orange, black and grey, because the Giants are here to stay.
This is @mary__kaye from @ladieswholeague