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It pains me to give them credit, but it looks like the AFL knew what it was doing when setting up the expansion teams.
The football world gasped in horror at the unprecedented bounty of highly rated young players handed to Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney when they were established.
The Giants, in particular, took full advantage of the system, targeting young guns from other clubs – rather than veterans, as the Suns did – as uncontracted recruits, and using their mini-draft concessions to acquire top picks.
They received six first-round picks, in fact, which included picks four and ten in 2011 and picks two and three in 2012. Bloody hell.
In 2014, Dermott Brereton said the Giants were, “the best collection of what I would call junior AFL talent I’ve ever seen”.
But while the AFL underestimated the players the Giants would target as uncontracted players and the assets they would seek in return for their valuable mini-draft picks – not taking mature-age players in either scenario – it seemed to guess right that the expansion clubs would lose enough youngsters to rival clubs and miss out on enough high picks that they wouldn’t become invincible.
Already gone from the Giants for one reason or another are 2011 draftees Dom Tyson (pick three), Liam Sumner (ten) and Taylor Adams (13). Three of GWS’ first four picks at 2012 draft – Jono O’Rourke (two), Lachie Plowman (three) and Kristian Jaksch (12) – have also moved on.
(A quick aside, rival clubs should thank their lucky stars the Giants didn’t nail the 2012 draft. With the first three picks, GWS took Lachie Whitfield, O’Rourke and Plowman. Jimmy Toumpas (meh) went four, but was followed by Jake Stringer, Jack Macrae and Ollie Wines. Phew.)
In 2013, the draft started to look normal again and the Giants took now-wealthy Bulldog Tom Boyd with pick one. At pick 14, they gambled on young key forward Cam McCarthy, who shone last season and is now out indefinitely after not being traded home to Western Australia. Not only is he almost certainly gone at the end of the season, his trade value has taken a hammering.
Perhaps the biggest departure thus far was during this past off-season when gun midfielder Adam Treloar demanded and received a trade to Collingwood. Tomas Bugg and Curtly Hampton, neither of whom lived up to the expectations the club had when recruiting them as 17-year-olds, also left last spring.
Josh Bruce and Anthony Miles are key players at different clubs after beginning their AFL lives as Giants.
That’s a lot of young talent to lose in a very short amount of time.
In most cases, the Giants have received valuable pieces in return, be they high draft picks or veteran players (such as Heath Shaw and Ryan Griffen) meaning they still have an outrageous 16 top-ten picks on their list – Carlton is next highest with ten.
But as we’ve learnt from the Blues, not all high picks are created equally, and if you dig a little deeper, GWS aren’t as frightening as you might think.
Griffen (former pick three) has been a star and could well be again, but he turns 30 this season, so it’s uncertain whether he’ll play a key role in a premiership tilt. Rhys Palmer (seven), Tom Scully (one) and Phil Davis (ten) are valuable veteran role players.
There are question marks on Will Hoskin-Elliott (four), Matt Buntine (five) and even Whitfield (one) to some extent – Whitfield is a nice player, and still only 21, but he isn’t keeping opponents up at night.
Jonathon Patton (one) is the kind of player who keeps opponents up at night, but injury troubles mean he has managed only 32 games in four seasons.
Nick Haynes (seven) is a solid young key defender who is probably best suited to playing as the third tall. Adam Tomlinson (nine) is a promising key-position option and still just 22, but has work to do.
That’s ten of those 16 picks.
It’s too early to judge Josh Kelly (two), Caleb Marchbank (six), Jacob Hopper (seven), Paul Ahern (seven) or Jarrod Pickett (four), though history suggests they won’t all work out – at least not for GWS.
Stephen Coniglio (two) is a very good two-way midfielder in the Kieren Jack mould.
There’s still a lot of talent there, much of it young, and to be fair, it doesn’t include arguably the Giants’ five best players: Jeremy Cameron, Shane Mumford, Heath Shaw, Dylan Shiel and Callan Ward.
The list is still incredibly healthy and GWS remain primed for a sustained tilt at the top four starting as soon as this year. But the two teams most similarly placed as of right now are the Magpies and Bulldogs (who knows what’s going on up north with the Suns), and they each have exciting young lists and high expectations of their own.
A GWS premiership in the next five years is still a very real possibility and if it happens, it will have all been worth it. But the Giants no longer look like the sure-thing, all-conquering dynasty they once did.