There’s a fine line between an admirable iconoclast and a stubborn idiot.
You can so quickly go from being Ange Postecoglou dragging Tottenham to their first trophy in a million years, to Ange Postecoglou not winning any of his only eight games in charge of Nottingham Forrest and getting sacked after 39 days in the worst Greek on Greek crime since the civil war.
Adam Kingsley, with this hyper talented but ageing and injured Giants’ list, is treading that line.
Kingsley has a clear way he wants to play, and when it works, oh boy is it sexy. They win the ball back close to their own goal and from there they run and dash and carry with handball and precise ball movement kicking into a collection of freaky forwards that span powerhouses like Jesse Hogan, X-Men like Aaron Cadman, and legends like Toby Greene.
Nobody in footy gained more metres by handball than the Giants last year, and they were top 5 in footy in scores from the back half, taking the ball from back half to a score, and ultimately overall scoring.
They were also a highly efficient team going forward because the orange tsunami afforded them high quality shots. Again, the Giants were top five in each of inside 50 retention percentage and scores per inside 50.
The problem with Kingsley having a way to play, is that he refuses to budge off it even when minor tweaks would help him. The reason the Giants’ per inside 50 stats are so good is because, for a good team, they have so few of them.
GWS was 14th in inside 50 differential last year and 13th in time in forward half. They were the only team that scored an equal amount of points from the front and the back half of the ground.
This is a feature not a bug. In 2024, the Giants were 14th in inside 50 differential and 11th in time in forward half.
Adam Kingsley would have been terrible in WW1. He has no concept of field position.
What that meant was, in big games, when teams were able to clamp down on Giant ball movement, they were stuck in the mud because they had no other ways to score.
Plan B is always to do Plan A better.
And this is not a problem of personnel. Toby Bedford, Harvey Thomas, and Darcy Jones are all good pressure players. Aaron Cadman and Callum Brown also put in the work as pressure key forwards.
They are structurally not set up to get the ball back close to their own goal.
Once the ball leaves their forward 50, it’s basically out because their key backs are left on an island closer to their own goal. There are so few repeat entries. I simply do not understand why there is so often an ocean of space between the ball leaving GWS’ 50 and Sam Taylor doing something borderline miraculous to stop an opposition goal on his own goal line.
While Talyor, Jack Buckley and Connor Idun are excellent, so much is asked of them. To that end, the only team that gave up more inside 50s than GWS was West Coast. And that doesn’t change, even when Taylor is out injured. Taylor missed rounds 16-21 last season, and across those six games the Giants had two of their eight worst opponent inside 50 games of the season.
Taylor is injured again heading into the year, and if last year is anything to go by then good attacking teams will be able to exploit the amount of pressure the Giants put on their own defenders.
But, again, everything is in service of getting the tsunami running. Their deep set up ensures that when the Giants do get the ball back, they can kickstart their run and carry game from the back half with the Lachies (Ash and Whitfield.
The team sets up like a boxer who only wants to counterpunch. Across the board, in both attack and defence, it’s only about efficiency and has no concept of the value of volume.
In 2026, refusing to try to play a front half game is like only kicking drop punts.
It is possible that this offseason Kingsley saw the blindingly obvious and wants to spend at least a bit more time in his front half. The acquisition of Clayton Oliver points to that.
Given their personnel, the Giants were an astonishingly good stoppage and clearance side last year, sitting 10th in contested ball, 13th in total clearances, and fifth in stoppage scoring.
They would have been last in everything without Tom Green. He was playing a lone hand, like Luther told Ethan Hunt he was doing during one of the first idol worshipping scenes of the last Mission: Impossible.
Green averaged about 16 contested possessions and 9 clearances a game last year. Outside runner extraordinaire Finn Callaghan was second on the Giants in both, averaging eight and five respectively.
But now, Green is done for the year (is GWS situated near an electrical plant?). That injury heaps even more pressure on the newly acquired Clayton Oliver. Even in one of the worst years of his career, Oliver still averaged 12 contested possessions a game and six clearances.
He’s going to need to have a better year than that if GWS are going to improve their field position woes.
If Oliver is at his best, alongside some internal development that can recreate Tom Green in the aggregate, they should get it to their forwards more quickly and they should be able to take advantage given they will be at a talent advantage in almost literally every matchup.
Even then, this is in trouble given Finn Callaghan’s injury and the possibility that he misses time early in the season
While I’m not holding my breath on the Giants trying to lock the ball in their front half because, if they are the eigth best clearance team and their transition game gets even better with a full season from Brent Daniels (though he is also injured), the Giants should finish in the top-4.
Based on the talent on their list, they should be the best team in the comp, but they refuse to play serious footy. They’ll be good.
We will wish they were better.