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For all the talk about the new Greater Western Sydney AFL club, no one has really commented on the club’s potential to grow Australian football in a once foreign land.
Indeed the launch of the club name and jumper on Tuesday night was just the beginning. More is to come. No matter how anti-AFL you might be, this football club is not going to fall down and die in a few short years. The AFL has spent too much money, has worked too hard in such a short space of time to allow that to happen.
Indeed, the road will be tough. The club will struggle at times. But when it comes to the Greater Western Sydney Giants, there is more to it than just the first five or 10 years.
The club needs to gain a foothold in the area, connect with the community, and above all else, show off the wonderful game of Australian football to the young children, the future generation of Australian sport.
The AFL or GWS Giants FC are not interested in stealing supporters from rugby league or rival codes. It is not interested in killing off rival clubs or stealing a community from rugby league’s jaws.
The GWS Giants will appeal to the young, under 18 boys and girls, who for the first time, will have a real, genuine choice in regards to their preferred code.
The current, experienced crop of aging Australian sporting fans must realise that GWS are a club for the future, not for the present.
Rugby league die-hards and Daily Telegraph ‘journalists’ can tease the living daylights out of the AFL as much as they want, but the time for change is coming.
For too long Australian football has been caught, stuck in the ghosts of its Victorian, tribal past.
Now is the time when it truly broadens its wings and offers its product to a new crop of sporting fans, with a real choice to make. Some people ask why the supposed sporting capital of the world, Melbourne, is regarded as so.
AFL may have religion-like status in the southern capital, but the city’s diversity and embracement of other codes is evident, never more so than when the Melbourne Victory achieve the highest crowds in the A-League, when the Melbourne Storm average crowds similar to that of the suburban Sydney NRL club in a dead home and away season.
Here’s hoping that the people of Western Sydney can do something similar.
The GWS Giants are a club to be reckoned with. Australian football is a code that is set to take on its final frontier. Opposition from rival codes and a stifled media is not what will decide its fate. Only the people, and future participants in the Australian sporting scene will decide.
To plagiarise a famous quote from Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for Australia, one Giant leap for Australian football.”
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