Greater Western Sydney’s foray into becoming a strong AFL entity in Western Sydney has come under immense pressure for a myriad of reasons in the past 48 hours.
This has become even more acute after being demolished by 135 points against the Adelaide Crows on Mother’s Day at Skoda Stadium.
Many media commentators from inside and outside the AFL community have been whipping the GWS Giants, largely to do with the controversial post-match comments made by GWS coach Kevin Sheedy.
While the record low crowd for a GWS home game of 5,830 on Sunday was given wide publicity from the media at first, considering it was the worst AFL crowd since the Fitzroy era, social media picked up on comments made by Kevin Sheedy in his post-match address to the media.
Just in case you were not aware of what was said, Sheedy made a comparison to the challenges facing the GWS Giants growing the game in Western Sydney in comparison to the A-League’s Western Sydney Wanderers by saying that “we don’t have the recruiting officer called the Immigration Department recruiting fans for the West Sydney Wanderers”.
Although Sheedy has attempted to provide context to his initial comments, football personalities such as SBS’s Football Analyst Craig Foster and Wellington Phoenix’s captain Andrew Durante reactions to Sheedy’s comments summarise the anger that has been demonstrated by the wider football community on social media outlets.
Foster was particularly venomous in his attack on Sheedy by saying his comments “were a disgrace to this country” and suggested to Sheedy that “maybe it’s time you got on a boat, and take your ignorance with you”. Durante labelled Sheedy a “muppet” for his comments and questioned whether GWS would draw even 4,000 to its next home game against the West Coast Eagles.
Since the reaction, Sheedy has fronted up to the media once again to defend himself by saying that “it’s a throwaway line to make sure that everyone understands that is why soccer can get such a quick crowd”.
He continued to reiterate the significant challenge that GWS has ahead of itself of establishing a strong foothold in Western Sydney.
If anything has come out of the last 48 hours regarding the Giants, it is that they are in for a tough season, perhaps more than they would have even anticipated, on and off the field.
Next match for the Giants is against the red-hot Hawthorn at Aurora Stadium this Saturday and they will be making sure that they can minimise the damage that Hawthorn could potentially deliver to them, especially if the Hawks can muster anything similar to their first quarter efforts against the Sydney Swans last Saturday night.
Perhaps what is even more significant now is their next home game against the West Coast Eagles at Skoda Stadium on May 25. The Giants will be in overdrive trying to promote this game to the Western Sydney community after the disaster on and off the field on Mother’s Day.
Currently, the Giants are still very much in their infancy and they are desperate to establish a positive club culture that would for their sake, result in increasing popularity among the Western Sydney population, especially since these recent events.
While it can debated as to whether Sheedy’s comments were out of line or not, what has to be remembered is that if the Giants want to attract greater crowds to Skoda Stadium, then they need to be much more competitive than they were against Adelaide.
Ultimately, the events of the last 48 hours has just provided another reminder to GWS and AFL headquarters that they have significant challenges ahead of them if they want to succeed in Western Sydney.
Post_hoc
Guest
Curious to know is that thousands of kiddies, 1000 ro 2000 couldn't be much more than that. I have gone past the AFL oval in Rouse Hill a few times and nothing ever seems to be going on there. This is in the North West of Sydney the supposedly heartland of AFL in Western Sydney, it always looks empty. Not sure where the thousands are......
Australian Rules
Guest
The success of the Wanderers doesn't speak to the lack of quality in the ALeague, it speaks to the remarkable job that the football department and players did. Whilst I agree that the player pool is one difference between the sports (and obviously soccer's dwarfs the AFL's globally) it wasn't the difference between the relative success of the 2 new clubs. The difference was in the strategies taken by the 2 governing bodies. The analogy I've used before is this: - the FFA body planted a ready-made team in a heartland area; - the AFL planted a seed in foreign territory and started watering. If the AFL plant still hasn't grown by 2032, then we'll know it has been a failure. We won't know before then.
1860melbourne
Guest
With an 18 team league there will always be a bunch of also rans and basket case clubs getting walloped week in week out!
Titus
Guest
Oh really MilF? It is pretyt much anything that sells tickets. Though it admits smaller theatres and productions that self ticket are under represented. I notice you typed yours up instead of providng a link, if you want to provide a link i will have a squiz.
ciudadmarron
Guest
Goodness - not division! You don't mean to say you don't like reading articles which criticise aspects of Aussie Rules (and not the game itself) or seek to disassemble the metanarrative around it? I feel for you Jimbo, I really do! But in reality division is created by untruths, like the lines Sheedy repeated. Digging up long forgotten newspaper articles and shedding light on them - and yes, even pointing out that they tell a slightly different story to the one we are often told - is hardly the work of a divisive wackjob. However the point remains that football has a long history in Western Sydney and that footballers were clearly being recognised as solid Australian citizens without any disrespect being meted out for their choice of code.
fishes
Guest
Sheedy had it wrong. The biggest lesson the "GWS" can learn from the A-League is how to set up a brand properly. Australian names like the Wanderers will always connect more than Americanisms like the "Giants". There's a good reason why sports teams use orange instead of fluorescent orange, and black instead of 'charcoal'. Not mention that Greater Western Sydney doesn't mean anything and it definitely doesn't incorporate Canberra. It isn't even in the same state for goodness sake. But don't worry, the will come good in 98 years or something. So who cares, right?
Australian Rules
Guest
A little sidebar about St Kilda's strip... During a game against Carlton (I think in about 1914) the Saints were reduced to 14 men and hung on to win the match. As a tribute, the 14 players were awarded with medals in the shapes of crosses. Years later the "cross medal" as was adopted as part of their guernsey...and remains on the left breast today. The club's colours were always red, white and black...but that was also the colours of...ze Germans. So during WWI they changed to red, gold and black. (And as irony would have it, that *became* Germany's colours). The club reverted to its original colours in 1923 and that continues today.
clipper
Guest
Agree with your points Redb - as you say Melbourne lacks the geographical point of difference that Sydney has, so GWS and Storm comparisons are valid except for one major point - Storm hit the boards running and have been at, or near the top for most of their 15 years. If this had happened to GWS then the crowds may have been better, although it's hard to know how the crowds would be afftected if the Storm eventually slide down the ladder
Australian Rules
Guest
Punter, I can promise you this... If 200 chairs were smashed by fans during a Ess v Carl match at Etihad, it would be a way, WAY bigger story down in Melbourne. And I doubt that when it *did* get reported, AFL fans wouldn't have screamed "why are you picking on us?!"
Jimbo
Guest
Craig Fister :) is he the new ALF.
Biala Gwiazda
Guest
I'm with Fuss - the comment about WSW's success equating to poor A-League quality is spectacularly ill-informed. A successful first-season A-League team says absolutely NOTHING about the league's quality. If a new AFL team starts up, the player pool numbers in the hundreds, almost all of whom are contracted to existing AFL clubs. The actual available (uncontracted or off-contract) player pool would number no more than a few dozen. It's accordingly very difficult to build a capable squad. If a new A-League team starts up, the available player pool is in the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands. It's fairly easy to build a competitive team provided you have a quality manager and a healthy player salary budget.
Planet Football
Guest
Actually, Foster didn't play in the 'backline'.... he was a midfielder.
ciudadmarron
Guest
What he offers is accurate historical research for some perspective. You don't have to agree with his sentiments about how the game has been treated but he provides evidence about often ignored aspects of the history of the game. Are you going to suggest to me that Granville Magpies did not exist? Or perhaps that soccer wasn't played in western sydney at all prior to the post war waves of migration? Maybe that the ANZACs who played soccer were actually not Australians?
yewonk
Guest
who is andrew davies? he has not commented on his own article at all.
Jimbo
Guest
When you start quoting Ian Syson, or linking his website, your entire credibility to offer something that can be considered reasonable and fair to both soccer and AF is thrown out the window. He offers absolutely nothing.
Redb
Roar Guru
Participants = Spectators is a model that does not necessarily equate.
ciudadmarron
Guest
Ahmed, re: "the delights of the australian game" - the inference with this type of comment therefore, intended or no, becomes that to play or follow one of these sports is "australian" and the other is not. When recent immigrants are maligned as it is, this is just another in a long line of accusations that they aren't assimilating quick enough. The "Australian" game's only claim to being Australian is that it was developed on this continent. When it was invented it was done so by a product of the English Public school system and his rules were almost exactly the same as the FA rules upon which soccer was founded. At this time soccer players marked the football and before it in some areas had used behind posts and infinite goals. The code flourished only in some of the colonies, something which largely continues to this day. Now its codification here might well allow it to be called the australian game; but this is not what people mean when they use this term. As you inferred, we all know what Kevin meant... But we are Australians because that's what it says on our passport or citizenship papers and that is all - not because of what football code we follow or play, if any. Further to this, those defending Sheedy's comments keep suggestiong that they were poorly worded but accurate. They are not. 1/3 of people in Western Sydney are immigrants. (Wow, I found that out without having to go to the Department of Immigration myself as it happens). Sheedy supposes that the entire Wanderers crowd have come from this group of people, channelled like so much seething foreign chattel into the west. This is highly inaccurate. It also ignores the hard work that has gone in to creating the club on a shoestring, the goodwill of all the volunteers, players, coaches, officials. No, no, Kevin knows best; they only had to turn up because of all the immigrants. How insulting to the Wanderers organisation and the people of western sydney who Kevin, despite his protests, and the Giants, despite theirs, clearly do not understand. There is also a supposition that it is these migrants who bring their love of the game to Western Sydney. This is also innacurate, as Ian Syson's excellent blog points out: http://neososmos.blogspot.com.au/
Jimbo
Guest
This claim has only been repeated 200 times in the last 2 days, with the infrastructure put in place and all the thousands of kiddies in WS, the AFL and the Giants will be around for a long time. Participation numbers are actually very good, club numbers are quite low but have risen in the last 2 years, on the back of the Giants, and will rise more. A couple of million here and there if needs be will be found ... small change. IMO a third side is needed in Sydney :)
Bondy
Fuss, "From what we’ve seen of GWS, if they needed a $200k player they had to source poorly qualified labour – the market didn’t determine the player’s value". That's what I like about the sport, market value or corrections I.E. A Caroll to Liverpool FC. The players salary is dictated to by the club that wants him most.
Marc
Guest
Anthony, spelling is not your strong suit.