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The comparison is inevitable: who is doing it better, the Giants or the Suns?
We’ll know part of the answer to this question this year, with the Giants expected to contend for a spot in the eight. The Suns could do the same if they get their side on the park.
Let’s unpack this, and have a bit of fun along the way.
It is, of course, ridiculously early to talk whether these two ventures have been a success. We know the AFL remains a significant source of financial backing, both clubs remain in their first round of team building and neither have recorded a single-season winning record. That’s fine, we’re playing the long game.
But what about the short game? What can we expect from the league’s newest teams? Let’s keep the comparison theme going, and dive into how the league’s newest franchises are positioned in 2016, and 2016 only. We’ll carve this into three rounds, and keep score like in boxing. Why? Why not.
Hand raised talent
This comes down to a question of quantity versus quality.
The Giants have the greater quantity of top end, hand raised (that is to say drafted) talent. Coming into 2016, Greater Western Sydney have an obscene 17 top 20 picks that they themselves made, and two players in Jeremy Cameron and Dylan Shiel that would have likely gone that high had they not been pre-listed. And for the most part, they are first 22 players.
Players like Lachie Whitfield (51 games), Stephen Coniglio (62), Will Hoskin-Elliott (50), Adam Tomlinson (53), Devon Smith (79) and Toby Greene (75) have all shown enough to suggest they will play 150 games of AFL football in their careers. There are some who haven’t quite come on to the extent that their blue-chip status would suggest: Josh Kelly is the head of this group, which includes Matt Buntine, Nick Haynes and Aidan Corr.
There is a great quantity of players, but the quality of players is perhaps not quite there, save for Cameron and Shiel, who are already pushing their names into the top 50 conversation, and Jonathon Patton who could be the last of the hulking key forwards.
Cam McCarthy showed he’s got the chops, too, but, well, is it too soon to call him a Fremantle Docker?
This is where the scales might just tip the way of Gold Coast. The Suns have 13 top 20 picks made off their own bat on their 2016 list, but the quality of those players is stronger as a collective.
Gold Coast also have Jaeger O’Meara and Jack Martin, who were near-certainties to be top five picks in their respective draft years – and so the quantity factor is basically chalk. Outside of those two, the Suns have David Swallow, Dion Prestia and Tom Lynch as hand raised draft selections – a group of five players that are better than the Giants’ top five top 20 picks.
Prior to this season, the Suns also had Harley Bennell (pick two, 2010) and Charlie Dixon (pre-listed) running around for them. It’s an unfair fight without those guys, but with them it would have been no contest – the Suns have better young players, even if they have fewer of them, than the Giants.
The biggest concern is whether we will ever get to see all of the Suns’ talent on the field, fit and firing, at the same time. O’Meara and Swallow will miss the early stages of the season, and Bennell and Dixon have already left. The News Limited vultures are circling around Prestia, too.
So Greater Western Sydney have landed plenty of blows, but many are glancing. The Suns make the decisive move in Round 1 and go up 10-9.
Gold Coast: 10
Greater Western Sydney: 9
Mergers and acquisitions
When it comes to veteran talent, merged in the early stages of franchise life or acquired in more recent times, the disparity between these two sides is stark.
Gold Coast’s mature-age recruits, except for the bald guy, have been a near-unmitigated disaster. We discussed this in September, but it is worth repeating here. This is the list of mature-age players that came to the Coast, but have, for one reason or another, flamed out.
Campbell Brown
Jarrad Brennan
Nathan Bock
Greg Broughton
Nathan Krakouer
Andrew Raines
Nathan Ablett
Gary Ablett Jr obviously remains, as do Jarrod Harbrow and Michael Rischitelli. Nick Malceski’s joined as a free agent last season, and as one Roar expert put it, there weren’t enough negatives to describe his season.
The Suns have looked to address this deficiency in the off-season, bringing in a few extra veterans to supplement those that remain: Matt Rosa, Jarrad Grant and Daniel Currie.
They’re fine, and will all likely play a substantial number of games in 2016, but one thinks they are only on the list because of the complete flame out of many of Gold Coast’s other veteran additions. It leaves the Suns with an experience gap – they’re the fourth-least experienced side heading into the year – and meant when injuries struck in 2015 that they were found wanting.
What about the Giants? They have done precisely the opposite and nailed almost every choice they have made on the veteran front. There’s a strong argument that they have, in fact, nailed every one, if you forget they recruited Setanta Ó hAilpín.
Coming into 2016, the Giants boast this line-up of mergers and acquisitions:
Callan Ward
Dawson Simpson
Heath Shaw
Joel Patfull
Phil Davis
Rhys Palmer
Ryan Griffen
Sam Reid
Shane Mumford
Steve Johnson
Tom Scully
Nailed. It. Other than Dawson Simpson and rookie Sam Reid, each one of these vets can be expected to play crucial roles for the Giants. It is hard to put your finger on the most important player in that group, but if I were to pick one it would be Shane Mumford. Champion Data analysis showed the Giants were +25 in clearance differential when he was in the play, and -63 when he was out of it. I described him as the bodyguard of a boy band last year.
This one is absolutely no contest. You can quibble about whether a (reported) seven figure salary is too much for a tagger (Scully), whether Shaw is a poor defender (advanced stats show he isn’t) and whether Griffen is passed his peak (so what?). The Giants still come out clearly on top.
I’ll go so far as to say the Suns have been knocked to the canvas in Round 2, with a penetrating right hook from the younger fighter hitting home unguarded.
Gold Coast: 10 + 8 = 18
Greater Western Sydney: 9 + 10 = 19
Xs and Os
The decisive blow looks to have been landed in the second round, with the Suns needing to come out swinging in Round 3 to get this bout back on level pegging.
Gold Coast’s 2015 could be seen as a complete, club-wide reset under new coach Rodney Eade. That appears to have been centred on off-field affairs for the most part, with club suspensions a far too common occurrence on the Coast last year. This did not, however, extend to the on-field performance of Eade’s side.
As described on The Roar‘s AFL Podcast season preview for the Suns, the Suns were pitiful and horrendous on the outside of the play last year. They gave up an uncontested possession differential of -71 per game last season, and allowed their opponents to take an average of 25 marks per game more than them. The next worst full season uncontested possession differential was Carlton’s -22.8 per game (oh yes), and the next worse marking differential was also Carlton at -14.5 per game.
What’s the deal here? The common answer is Eade is living in the past. This is misguided: when Eade’s Dogs were firing on all cylinders in the latter part of the last decade, his teams led the league in uncontested possession differential and marking differential. What is far more likely is that last year was an aberration, caused by the aforementioned depth problems and the generally mediocre quality of Gold Coast’s below blue-chip players. They weren’t able to compete with the best of the competition, and so were blown off the park.
When they are up and running – like in the first half of 2014 – the Suns were an excellent contested possession side, able to use individual brilliance to earn a greater share of the ball than their opponents. They played a very attacking, direct style, enabled by the presence of Dixon and Lynch in the forward 50.
Things have changed a lot since then, and the first half of this year will be telling as to whether Gold Coast can innovate and keep up with the times. For the Giants, well, they’re at the cutting edge.
In the first half of 2015, the Giants did their best to resemble the Thompson-era Cats, using run and carry, and plenty of handballs, to charge up the ground. On defence, it was a matter of outworking their opponents, closing down space and harassing. These two strategic features of the Giants’ game are enabled by their players – where they may be lacking the individual brilliance of the Suns they make up for with power and pace.
The Shiel-Ward duo is a pack-busting monster; a tour de force of strength, stamina and dare. Coniglio, Greene and to a lesser extent Palmer offer the Giants depth and contribute at a B-plus level that is enough to keep the ball moving forward. Scully is an aerobic beast, who was pushing 95 per cent game time before injury halted his season in Round 19.
Greater Western Sydney’s strengths were on show in their Round 6 victory against the Hawks. Hawthorn had the run of play, but the Giants whooped them on the counter-attack with pace and dare, and force their opponents into their lowest kick-to-handball ratio in half a decade.
That’s not to say anything about GWS’ veteran-laden defence, which will be pushing top eight this year if they can get a full season out of Phil Davis, and the versatile forward line, enabled by the tall-small play of Jeremy Cameron. They rely on midfielders to kick goals, a system that will only grow more important – so we’re led to believe – with the continued downward pressure on use of the interchange.
So it is a clear victory to the Giants here, although we have to give Gold Coast some benefit of the doubt after last year’s injury run. We’ll score this one 10-9 in favour of Greater Western Sydney.
Final results
Gold Coast: 10 + 8 + 9 = 27
Greater Western Sydney: 9 + 10 + 10 = 29
So it’s a relatively decisive victory to the Giants as far as a boxing bout goes, 29 to 27. That was fun. What does it mean for the year ahead though?
To be honest, I’m still hesitant to pick the Giants as a finalist. They have the talent, the veteran heads, and the tactical nous to take it up to the 400-pound gorillas of the competition in 2016. But, the mess of teams around their part of the ladder is, well, a mess. It’s a similar story for Gold Coast, albeit they have plenty of ground to make up after a torrid 2015.
Do either, or both, of these sides make it to the promised land in 2016? I will have an answer to this, and as many other questions as Patrick Effeney and the editors will let me cram into a single column, on Wednesday. The 2016 season is coming; it’s time to get serious.