Falling Back in Love with GWS

Falling Back in Love with GWS

GuyWhoLikesSport GuyWhoLikesSport

My relationship with GWS has been like dating someone you know is a fixer-upper: smart, exciting, fun—but with one fatal flaw that makes it impossible to work.

The Giants are that girl.

Even with a limited contested midfield, they’re elite at stopping first possessions from becoming clean clearances.

Beyond that, they might have the best forward line, best defence, and the slickest transition game in the league.

But like the priest in Fleabag, I knew from the beginning what I was getting into. And I dove in anyway.

After that loss to Fremantle and even their fluky win against Geelong, I was ready to pull back and return to God.

Fleabag’s flaw, in the end, was that she wasn’t God. Not her fault, really.

GWS? Their flaw is more human, perfect was the mortal enemy of good.

It felt like the Giants read the press clippings about the Orange Tsunami and then decided that’s the only way they wanted to play.

If they didn’t kick a perfect goal, they didn’t want to kick a goal at all.

A perfect goal meant switching across the last line of defence to stretch opposition zones, with a view to getting the ball into the Mario Kart rainbow strip in the corridor. From there, Finn Callaghan – a creature of the corridor – would get the ball and go, usually from a handball now that the space has been created.

It’s a sexy way to play, but it’s hard, and teams cottoned onto it.

When Finn Callaghan has 15 or more handball receives, the Giants are 5–1.

When he has fewer, they’re 0–4.

Teams sat on Callahan and pushed up hard against them, making that chip mark game along the last line of defence feel like walking a tightrope between skyscrapers.

Even Fremantle cottoned on, generating 14 scoring shots from the front half and 18 from turnover – both their third best marks for the season.

The game felt like Minority Report, where Freo was a team pre-cogs who could see what was coming and stopping it before it could start.

That obsession with scoring from the back also meant that Adam Kingsley failed to learn the most important lesson from Damien Hardwick – time in forward half matters.

Heading into the Carlton game, GWS was 15th in time in forward half.

With a team that employs should-be pressure players like Darcy Jones, Harvey Thomas, Cody Angove, Callum Brown and even Brent Daniels when he plays, that’s a structure problem.

They set up way too far back, because they want the numbers to support the run that takes commentators from 6-midnight talking about the Orange Tsunami.

Let’s return to the Fremantle debacle.

Against St Kilda the previous week, Freo’s ball movement was constipated because the Saints started defending so high.

Playing GWS was their laxette.

They picked through the Giants’ non-existent pressure and terrible tackling time and again.

Freo scored more than they have all season from the back half and had their second-best transition game for the season.

After that game I was ready to give up on the Giants.

Then I watched them play Carlton.

If I’m the priest, I’m thinking of leaving the monastery now.

Let’s start with ball movement.

The Giants had one of their best back half scoring and transition games for the season against Carlton, but the way they did it was different.

With no Finn Callaghan and knowing that Carlton is the best front half team and the best at stopping transition, their first kick from defence was vertical rather than horizontal.

They were trying to get over the high-Carlton press early, rather than handball through it as they would have done a fortnight ago.

That initial kick was also often wide in the first instance, then went into the corridor from closer to goal.

The tone was the same – stretch the defence to get into the corridor – but the rhythm was faster.

They also played a more ‘take territory’ game. More kicking. More tapping on to teammates.

Occasionally, they even kicked long to contests inside 50, it meant more dirty goals than they’d kicked all year.

It was thrilling and pragmatic.

But what I really loved was their field-position. GWS’ pressure was scalding, for what felt like the first time all season.

They held Carlton to their third fewest marks for the season while having 49.9% of the game played in the GWS half – the Giants’ second-best game for the season.

That newfound interest in defending also meant that the Giants kicked 13.5 off turnover, clearly their best mark of the year.

With the horses that GWS has – and the players that they have set to return over the next month – there’s no reason the Carlton game can’t be the rule rather than the exception for the second half of the year.

If it is, I’m not just back – I’m ready to be hurt by her again.