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2023 Best 23s: Just how Tiger-like will Adam Kingsley make his Giants in first season at the helm?

11th January, 2023
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11th January, 2023
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The countdown to Round 1, 2023 has officially begun – so throughout January, I’ll be looking at all 18 AFL clubs and doing my best to put together an optimum team for the new year.

I’ll take injuries and suspensions into account, but this won’t be a predicted team for Round 1 – think of it more as a guide to what your team’s best 23 (the 22 starting players plus the new unrestricted substitute) could look like as the year unfolds.

On the agenda today is the GWS Giants. Check out the links below if your team has already been done.

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Missing the finals, finishing in the bottom four for the first time since 2014, seeing the back of the coach and needing to offload a series of key players after a salary cap crisis – 2022 couldn’t have gone much worse for the Giants.

The side that made it to the 2019 grand final and three of four preliminary finals in that timespan has been slowly breaking apart for a while now, and it seems to have reached critical mass. Unlike Gold Coast, to whom they’re regularly compared as the most recent entrants onto the AFL scene, the Giants did a stack of things right setting up thei team for long-term success, but it’s clear that they have disadvantages when it comes to retaining talent that other rivals, and specifically powerful Victorian clubs, aren’t hindered by.

The Giants have to work smarter, not harder, from here to compete, in a similar vein to how Sydney formed the nucleus of a powerhouse in the 1990s and early 2000s. An ambitious trade to secure pick 1 in the draft, and with it the player they wanted all along in Aaron Cadman, was a good start.

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Adam Kingsley was front and centre in Richmond’s recent dynasty, as midfield coach in their 2019 and 2020 premierships. No doubt there will at least be a temptation to import some of the Tigers’ proven successful brand to a squad that, if anything, might be a smidgeon more talented than even the Tigers at their prime.

Elements will need to be tweaked, for a cert: but the Giants have at their disposal a man at the heart of the team that clocked modern footy from 2017 to 2020. Surely that experience is going to come in handy.

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Defenders

A big part of the Giants’ slide in 2022 was down to them falling from seventh for points against in 2021 down to 13th.

The positive is that wasn’t necessarily down to the personnel: the Giants’ midfield just couldn’t stop the ball frequently going down there, with only North Melbourne, West Coast and Hawthorn giving up more inside 50s.

Their season was personified in a nutshell in their final round clash with Fremantle. Sam Taylor had one of the great games by a key defender, pulling down nine intercept marks, five of them contested, and rebounding from defensive 50 seven times, all the while putting the clamps on the great Nat Fyfe. But the Giants gave up 69 inside 50s, while only winning 45 themselves, and got smashed 41-31 for clearances.

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You simply can’t win games of footy with that kind of discrepancy – indeed, Taylor and co. did a remarkable job to restrict the Dockers to just 13 goals, and keep the team in the contest for the duration of the match.

Taylor was a deserving All-Australian last year and has the potential to be the best defender in the game come season’s end; with him and the more limited but still capable Lachlan Keeffe filling the key posts, plus the developing Leek Aleer and injury returnee Jack Buckley as backup, Kingsley is well stocked for backline pillars.

Connor Idun has been ultra-impressive across the last two seasons as a makeshift third tall, and his underrated aerobic capacity allows him to track with mid-sizers like Bayley Fritsch. A broken foot cut his 2022 short, but 22-year old’s with his size and versatility aren’t exactly a dime a dozen.

That trio’s presence allows Nick Haynes a chance to do what he does best: sag off his direct opponent to intercept mark. Haynes didn’t look himself for great portions of last year, partly due to injury, partly sheer amount of dangerous ball coming into the Giants’ defensive 50. For him to be as damaging aerially as he can be, the onus will be on the midfield group to put enough pressure on opposition ball-carriers to force high balls he can then neutralise.

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Since Heath Shaw’s retirement, Isaac Cumming has stepped into his shoes as rebounder-in-chief, and has performed exceptionally well. The Giants love the ball in his hands like no one else in the team; he takes virtually every kickout, the team switches regularly to bring him into the play, and he rarely if ever lets them down by foot.

Caretaker coach Mark McVeigh had a style focused around slow, methodical build-up from defence that allowed Cumming and Harry Himmelberg to basically bring their own ball at times late last year. Kingsley’s challenge will be to harness his kicking skills in a more dangerous way; he can be a real weapon, rather than just a safe ball-user, with the right gameplan to work within.

Harry Perryman was moved further up the ground than ever before in 2022, spending time on a wing and as a tagger at centre bounces; but his safe ball use and cool head lends me to think Kingsley will return him to defence in 2022.

A reliable, hard-working small stopper is also a key element in modern footy: you might not recognise Adam Kennedy if you passed him on the street, but having managed 148 games at the Giants despite a string of injuries is testament to how highly he is rated internally in that role.

(Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images)

Midfielders

It might come as a surprise, but the Giants’ midfield, still chock-full of supposed superstars, was its biggest weakness in 2022.

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A group consisting of Josh Kelly, Stephen Coniglio, Tim Taranto, Jacob Hopper, the enormously talented Tom Green and Callan Ward really has no business ranking 12th for average clearances, or 15th for contested possessions. The Giants struggled mightily to win the ball at the coalface, with the result that only North Melbourne and West Coast averaged fewer inside 50s last year.

That they ended up eighth for average disposals is mostly down to the sheer amount they chipped the ball around in defensive 50 under McVeigh for the second half of the season. It stopped them getting flogged, but it was painful to watch a side that was once lauded as an unstoppable attacking machine become so stodgy with their ball movement.

Expect that to change under Kingsley. As Richmond’s midfield coach between 2019 and mid-2022, the Tigers were never dominant in the centre, but they prioritised a frenetic attack on the contest, smothering pressure and speed of movement forward once the ball was in their hands.

That’s why in 2019, despite ranking dead last for average clearances, second-last for contested possessions and 11th for disposals, they led the league for average inside 50s. Ditto 2020 – 12th for disposals, 13th for contested possessions, 16th for clearances and yet first again for inside 50s. It’s a style proven to win premierships.

That’s where Lachlan Ash comes in. The Giants’ midfield features a swathe of silky-smooth ball-winners, Kelly and Coniglio chief among them, but what it lacks is genuine pace and defensive intent. Ash has the first in abundance, and the second can surely be taught.

Kingsley was part of the Tigers’ brains trust that turned Shai Bolton from dangerous small forward into a legitimately outstanding goalkicking midfielder, with his spatial awareness, speed, pressure and goal nous making for a lethal combination around the ball. Ash has all the physical attributes to have a similar amount of success, and they won’t know if he’s got the smarts to have a similar impact unless they try it.

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Ash’s insertion into the midfield would also alleviate a bit of sameness around the Giants’ on-ball group; Kelly, Coniglio, the developing Finn Callaghan and even to the extent Lachie Whitfield are, to an extent, cut from the same cloth.

After being slowly shifted out of the midfield group by Cameron, Coniglio returned to prominence under McVeigh, and his tackling and clearance-winning stood out as still being among the game’s elite.

As a captain who has copped a barrage of criticism in a struggling side, there’s a bit of 2016-era Trent Cotchin about him. Cotchin turned his career, reputation, and club around by sacrificing his elite ball-winning skills to become a ruthless battering ram who lived for a tackle more than a stat.

Given Kingsley’s close working relationship with the triple-premiership captain over the years, I can’t help wondering if a similarly selfless role is on the cards for Coniglio.

Whitfield, realistically, can’t play anywhere other than a wing: but he runs all day, kicks exceptionally, and in a side with a greater focus on surging the ball forward rather than simply retaining possession, he could once again become a damaging footballer.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kelly start on the other wing before honing in to join the rest of the midfield group; he’s too good to not be around the ball, but over the last three years has been regularly shunted around both inside and outside roles as first Cameron and then McVeigh struggled to solve the puzzle of the Giants’ misfiring engine room.

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For an exceptional kick, elite runner and deadly finisher, Kelly doesn’t hurt opposition teams as much as he could: there was a time, and not too long ago, when he was regarded as one of the premier midfielders in the game. If Kingsley can find a role for Kelly to maximise his potential – something like Andrew Brayshaw’s at Fremantle, the inside-outside mover to get the ball free from the contest would suit him down to a tee – he can certainly return to his exceptional best.

The interesting watch will be on Tom Green. As Anthony Miles can attest, the Tigers’ premiership machine valued speed above all else in midfield. That’s Green’s notable weakness, but his strength is that he’s, for his age, the best inside midfielder going around.

Yes, he handballs a lot, doesn’t often hurt you on the scoreboard, and is more at home scrabbling for a ball in the contest. He isn’t explosive away from stoppages in the way that the game’s truly elite midfielders are. But Patrick Cripps and Clayton Oliver both had the same criticisms levelled at them in recent years, and look at them now.

He might not be wholly conducive to the Richmond style Kingsley helped to cultivate, but he’s too good to not make tweaks to the gameplan slightly. Whether it’s in 2023 or a few years down the line, Green will soon reach maximum power: and when he does, the Giants’ ball-winning problems in midfield will be a thing of the past.

The ruck role will also be a fascinating watch under Kingsley: the Giants seldom felt the need to play both Braydon Preuss and Matt Flynn in the same team, with injuries and suspensions allowing them to essentially alternate between them as number one ruck.

At the risk of invoking the Tigers again, Toby Nankervis and Ivan Soldo worked in tandem for large portions of Kingsley’s time at Punt Road, and with Flynn an exceptional contested mark, he has the potential to be more effective than either of the Tiger duo as a resting option in attack. All the signs are there that the pair will at least be tried at some point in 2023.

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Tom Green of the Giants

Tom Green. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)Giants looks dejected after a loss during the 2021 AFL Round 20 match between the GWS Giants and the Port Adelaide Power at Marvel Stadium on August 1, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Forwards

In 2016, the sight of Jeremy Cameron, Jonathan Patton and Rory Lobb as a key forward trio was enough to give opposition defences sleepless nights.

While those days are long gone, the Giants’ stocks up front look capable of more than the measly amount they were able to score last year – only two of the worst sides in recent memory, West Coast and North Melbourne, managed fewer points in 2022.

But it says something about their options that Toby Greene, despite missing the first five weeks through suspension, finished as their leading goalkicker with 37 majors. Greene is a superstar, and Jesse Hogan a more than capable spearhead with the potential to be more if the Giants’ ball movement can add a touch of dare, but the rest is more unknown.

He was switched into defence last year by McVeigh as the caretaker coach leaned into his possession-first gamestyle, but all the signs are there that Harry Himmeberg will once again be stationed in attack in 2022. He proved an adept ball-winner and reliable user during his stint at half-back, but a role as a roaming key forward delivering that final ball inside 50 should be his moving forward. Unless, of course, Kingsley sees value in stationing him closer to goal.

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Expect to see plenty of Aaron Cadman, too, and from the get-go. Another benefit of Himmelberg moving forward is allowing the 2022 number one draft pick to ease into his AFL career as the third, or even fourth, tall.

Cadman’s an interesting prospect in that he plays more like the Jeremy Cameron-Charlie Curnow type of key forward, rather than a contested-marking beast in the Tom Hawkins, Harry McKay or Tom Lynch mould. That’s handy to know as in recent memory, the latter kind have regularly dominated junior footy but then have battled against bigger, stronger, meaner defences and more restrictive systems when making the jump to AFL level – think Tom Boyd and Paddy McCartin, pick 1s themselves.

In the mix as well should be Jake Riccardi, an elite talent who hasn’t quite been able to build from his eye-catching debut season in 2020, nor bed down a consistent role. He’s been tried both in attack and in defence, but as a lead-up option in attack with Hogan and Himmelberg as the main forward points, his speed on the lead, goal sense and marking strength makes him potentially dangerous.

The only question is: can he and Cadman both start in the same forward line without the Giants becoming too top-heavy? With Greene as well a marking option in attack, there’s not much room for pressure smalls at ground level, which might mean Daniel Lloyd is required as a more pressure-based, mid-sized option who can still impact the scoreboard.

In that regard, Toby Bedford was surely recruited for this exact reason. With no Bobby Hill, and Brent Daniels enduring a nightmare 2022 with foot problems, the former Demon’s speed, tackling pressure and goal sense suddenly become a valuable commodity. Frustrated with a lack of opportunity at the Dees last year, in any role aside from the medical sub, it’s impossible to see why the Giants would have targeted him if they too were going to keep him on the sidelines.

Goalkicking small forwards are thin on the ground these days, but if Bedford can bring pressure, pace and a spark around forward line stoppages, he’ll be all but impossible to drop. The Tigers had a whole slew of this type of player during their premiership run: none of Jason Castagna, Dan Butler, Daniel Rioli, Jake Aarts, Jacob Townsend et.al could be relied upon for more than a goal or two a game, but their ability to lock the ball in attacking 50 earned them premiership medals and lots of them.

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Adam Kingsley

Adam Kingsley, senior coach of the GWS Giants. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

GWS Giants Best 23 2023

Backs: Nick Haynes, Sam Taylor, Lachlan Keeffe

Half-backs: Isaac Cumming, Connor Idun, Harry Perryman

Centres: Lachie Whitfield, Stephen Coniglio (c), Josh Kelly (c)

Followers: Braydon Preuss, Tom Green, Lachlan Ash

Half-forwards: Toby Bedford, Jesse Hogan, Jake Riccardi

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Forwards: Toby Greene (c), Harry Himmelberg, Aaron Cadman

Interchange: Finn Callaghan, Matt Flynn, Adam Kennedy, Callan Ward

Substitute: Daniel Lloyd

Emergencies: Callum Brown, Brent Daniels, Jacob Wehr

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