Had you asked Georgia Garnett to picture herself running out for a fiftieth AFLW game when she was first drafted, she would have struggled to conjure the image.
“If you’d asked me back then, when I had to wait a bit for my first game, I wouldn’t have thought I’d be here,” Garnett says.
Joining the club through the 2019 Draft after a stellar campaign in the AFL Sydney competition with the East Coast Eagles, Garnett had to bide her time, waiting almost 18 months for her AFLW debut.
It came in 2021, with a win at Blacktown over the Gold Coast Suns and she’s barely missed a match since, just desserts for one of the club’s biggest personalities and a near perfect exemplar of the GIANTS ”experiment”, as a product of Western Sydney herself.
Growing up a natural athlete and a talented touch footballer in the heart of league territory, Garnett’s pathways into sport were plentiful but it wasn’t until the GIANTS entered the AFL competition in 2012 that the sport garnered more momentum in the region.
In 2016, when the club’s AFLW license was approved to contest the league’s inaugural season, Garnett played her first game for North Western Thunder – a club made up of girls from Baulkham Hills and Kellyville/Rouse Hill.
“To run out in my 50th game for my club which is a club that’s 30 minutes away from where I grew up, that’s wild,” Garnett says.
“You get reminded here and there of your journey but this week I’ll take the opportunity to reflect.
“I have a lot of gratitude for what I have been doing the last few years at this footy club, and this is a moment to look back at that.
“I had to wait a while [to debut], I thought it wouldn’t come, but now it’s gone so quickly. The season comes and goes like that but the flip side is that training year-round for a 12-week season can go pretty slowly.”
Despite the slow build, Garnett fast established herself as one of the game’s brightest personalities, donning her trademark headband each week and building a fanbase through her flair and courage.
“To see a heap of young kids wearing the headband is pretty cool, not something I thought would happen,” Garnett says.
She’s also building up the club’s AFLW culture around her, bringing a trademark energy, that often also increases the decibels around both the clubrooms and change rooms on game day.
“I get my energy from feeling comfortable and being me,” Garnett says.
“This is a space that’s welcoming for everyone, it’s not just me bringing energy it’s everyone around us that allow us to be ourselves and its credit to the culture we have here and I bring the energy, but the girls feed off it and that gives me more, it goes both ways.”
That energy, paired with her growing off-field passion for DJing, means Garnett is charged with curating the team’s weekly pre-match playlist.
It’s one of a few crossovers between passions, with Garnett also mixing her own goal song, which GIANTS’ fans will hope to hear plenty of times on Sunday.
“Only this year have I realised how important music is to me,” Garnett says.
“I’m not a huge footy head, I don’t watch a lot and I’m not someone to take it home with me so having an outlet in music has allowed me to switch off and when I rock up here I can be on and present and at home rest and reset and that looks like getting on the decks and finding music.”
Garnett can hope there will be plenty of orange and charcoal in the crowd as she runs out for her 50th match in Sunday’s Sydney Derby IV, but she’ll know there are a few faces that will undoubtably be there to cheer her on.
“I don’t think mum has missed a game to this date and my partner Courtney is the same,” Garnett says.
“They’ve always been the same, dropping everything to make sure I could play sport, they’ve given up a lot.
“I really appreciate their support, as much back then as now.”
