As a GIANTS supporter, it has been a strange week.

To say I was pumped for the game on the weekend would be an understatement. The weather was beautiful, the deck looked great, and the crowd built for a cracking game of footy. Spotless is really starting to become a fortress, and I couldn’t have been happier to be heading there on a Saturday afternoon.

The team did us proud, a gutsy performance by all in what was a fantastic, momentous win against the Hawks.

It took a couple of days to come down from the high sustained by the win. I was flying. A massive win over the triple premiers, something I previously could only imagine. But that feeling was short lived.

The amount of AFL coverage in Sydney is growing, but I still follow the Victorian media where I can for footy news. What started on Saturday night as a general ‘how good are the GIANTS’ quickly turned to ‘how scary are the GIANTS’ - and then the fear and hysteria began, as anyone involved with the club probably suspected it would at some stage.

Some would have you think that it has been an easy road for the GIANTS, and for their supporters. Granted, we are a new team, but there have been tough times. The long train trips home after hundred point losses. That horrible feeling that a game was already over at half-time. But we sat there until the final siren, and cheered the boys as they left the field, knowing that they had given their all for the club. For us fans.

And over last few years, the wins have started to come. We are growing. Every week I see more orange colouring the grandstands. More orange on the way to the game. The crowds are building, as is the passion and loyalty of supporters.

I remember being in the member’s reserve during the Hawthorn game in 2015, at some stage during the last quarter when it looked like we might actually win. The crowd was on its feet, and as I looked around at the growing sea of orange I could feel a change. We were starting to believe. This is why we sat through those big losses. This is why the players gave their all and never surrendered.

Last year wasn’t to be, and who knows what the Footy Gods have in store this year. But as the team song goes, the other teams are quaking in their boots.

Any success we have now is on the back of years of hard work, not handouts or concessions. On the back of the loyalty and dedication of the players and staff. The club and its supporters have done the hard work, through blood, sweat, and tears. And now, when it starts to look like we will reap the rewards, some are starting to sit up and pay attention.

As the saying goes; if people hate you, you must be doing something right.

Not surprisingly, some will try to take what we have. Will try to say we’ve got it easy. But anyone who knows the club knows it has been anything but. The GIANTS are building something big here in Sydney, something we are proud to be a part of.

And they’ll never take that away from us.

Josh Heathcote is a GIANTS member who has been following the club since 2012. From Summer Hill in Sydney's inner west, he'd always loved AFL but didn't have a team that felt 'local' until the GIANTS joined the competition.