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Phil Gould can stop his one-man, anti-AFL crusade and go back to bed. The GWS Giants are missing a key ingredient in their battle to compete in Greater Western Sydney. It’s Greater Western Sydney.
The business case, the brand, the model, the demographic, the investment; it was all starting to make sense.
But looking into it a little bit further; it’s a hoax, a myth.
Setting up camp in Blacktown, the most central of three key local districts, was the correct play, and in the Giants’ words, a key to their manta of becoming “part of the local community in Greater Western Sydney, working with key community partners and local football communities.”
But words are words, and the locations of both the new club’s home ground and residential base is an insult to the people expected to identify with their new heroes.
I understand the arguments against this.
The training bases of several Melbourne clubs have moved outside their constituencies. The South Sydney Rabbitohs play at Homebush. Many members of parliament, let alone footballers, live outside the areas they represent.
But these clubs (I’ll leave the political analysis for another day) have established their brands and fan bases to such an extent that their geographic association has expanded.
The AFL has invested in an expensive quarry and decided it’s not worth digging on.
What’s the point in establishing a team within a specific community when playing on the eastern boundary at Homebush will make them inaccessible to a large portion of their fan base?
The club’s residential and media base at Breakfast Point is the final straw.
A gated community to the east of their region, the Giants have been hypocritical in asking for the buy-in of the community it serves without committing themselves.
While I don’t expect Tom Scully to rent a ground-floor flat in Macarthur, Kevin Sheedy’s statement that “we were told 12 months ago, no one would want to come to Western Sydney” is prophetic.
It seems he and his club don’t want to be there either.
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