With plenty of key learnings and points of development out of a mixed 2025 season, they GIANTS officially returned to the track in May to commence a three-month pre-season, rooted in hard work and expectation.  

AFLW Head Coach Cam Bernasconi and Executive General Manager of AFLW Alison Zell sat down with the GIANTS media team to reflect on the lead up and to preview the upcoming season.  

GIANTS Media: What have been the key focal areas for the coaching group coming into 2026?  

Cam Bernasconi: It's been a productive pre-season because it's been really clear on what we've had to get to work on with our contest and clearance. They were both big growth areas we identified and addressed in February. So when we came out of the blackout period, we had our focus points ready to go. 

We've been working on it for five months now, and it's really good to have four practice games where we've got to action it, and we've seen some real growth across those  games.  

We were green at clearance, and across two and a half of them, ahead on the contest battle. It's been pleasing to see the growth happened so quickly 

Alison Zell: One of the most significant focuses coming into 2026 was our contested ball play.  

We were 18th for contested ball last year, so it was clearly something we needed to work on, and we’ve seen some positive signs in growth across the four match sims.  

We also know we want to keep our identity, to be able to move the ball quickly across the field. We know that’s where the best teams are going so we need to do that sooner rather than later.  

The other thing we’ve introduced is a new leadership program with our six leaders.  

We haven’t had the opportunity to hold a formal leadership program with this team up until now, so working with Daniel Lynch, who also works with our men’s program as well, has been great and has zeroed in on how our leaders can be at their best to influence the game on field, as much as steer the group off it.  

GM: There have been some changes to the program structure this year, can you talk us through this? 

AZ: We had a concerted effort to put strong resourcing around Cam with some additional resources that we haven’t historically had access to.  

We believe he’s the perfect coach for our group, but he hasn’t had the structure around him - not through the fault of any previous personnel – that he does now.  

We have Emma Zielke, who given her coaching, playing and captaincy experience has been a fantastic addition so far. 

Shane Mumford brings a wealth of experience and knows how to coach stoppage and is a great ruck coach for our two young rucks. He has been a seamless addition to the program, and Stephen Camp is a young development coach who has worked with our players across the Academy programs and has worked in W for a couple of years now. 

He’s had an opportunity to step up this season as a backline coach and has worked hard to take that opportunity.  

CB: It's always refreshing bringing any new people into a program and we're really lucky to bring in Emma from Brisbane, Bec Privatelli from Sydney, Steve Camp coming up through our Academy and then Shane Mumford who comes out of the men's program.  

Having all those new footy minds is great because you get diversity in our thinking and we can challenge what we've done in the past and look to evolve and grow our approach. 

It's been really nice to have a bit more full-time help, especially being a new father and being a bit sleep deprived at times! I think it's great for the playing group to not just hear my voice all the time and it allows me to probably sit back a little and be a bit more strategic on the way that we train and work more with our leaders. 

GM: What should GIANTS fans be keeping their eyes out for this season?  

CB: Tyson Burke, our list manager, has done a terrific job of recruiting players that suit our system and a lot of our values, based off being a fearless, all-in competitor and bringing the orange tsunami.  

So our recruits have come in and their attributes have got them the opportunity to walk through the doors and certainly helped the way that we wanted to play, which is with speed. 

Bringing in good people is crucial, and we've certainly done that with our draftees and our senior players that were recruited in. And our replacement players have all value added on and off the field. 

I think there'll be lots of club debutants, especially early on in the season, which is really exciting because it means that we're improving and pushing forward. 

AZ: From a player perspective, Zarlie Goldsworthy is a superstar of the competition, which we saw last year.  

She can turn games on their head. She’s a really important part of a team by the way she leads through her actions, the impact of which can’t be understated.  

The return of Alyce Parker is something to look forward to as well. It made a massive difference to our team not having her on field last season. She has worked really hard to get back from this injury and has had two impeccable preseasons to draw on.  

Then the two players we traded in, in Tilly Lucas-Rodd and Poppy Boltz, help to anchor us down back. They were positional needs that we were looking at and Poppy has shown some really good form across the four match simulations as a young player who is already making an impact.  

Tilly’s form across the pre-season has also been impeccable. As a former captain, they’ve joined the leadership group, so their impact on this group has been immediate and we’re excited by the experience they bring into this side.