Sometimes, you do not choose a football club.  

Sometimes, one afternoon is enough for the club to choose you.  

In 2015, Lisa Salas walked into a Sydney Derby at the GIANTS’ home ground wearing a Swans cap. By the time she left, something had changed. 

Lisa had never considered herself an AFL supporter. Born in the Philippines and raised for part of her childhood in Singapore, her earliest sporting memories were shaped by basketball, tennis, football and the Olympics, often watched alongside her father.  

When she moved to Australia, rugby league became her first local sporting home. Her neighbours introduced her family to the game, took them to matches and helped them understand the culture surrounding it. Lisa became a Canterbury Bulldogs supporter and remained one for decades.  

Australian football came much later.  

She had once attended a game at the MCG through work, but the corporate suite had made a greater impression than the football. The sport appeared fast, unfamiliar and slightly chaotic.   

Then came the Derby.  

Before the game, Lisa met Shane Mumford’s mother at a nearby pub. They spoke about Shane, his journey and the club he represented.  It was a brief conversation, but it gave Lisa her first personal connection to the GIANTS before she had even entered the stadium.  

She went to the match without any real allegiance. Her partner supported the GIANTS, but Lisa arrived in a Swans cap.  

The GIANTS lost that day, yet they were the team she could not stop thinking about.  

Lisa could see how much they had given. There was something honest in their effort, the sense that the players had placed everything they had into the contest, regardless of the result.  

“They had put their heart and soul into it,” she recalls.  

That was what drew her in.  

It was not a victory, a trophy or a famous final that made Lisa look towards the GIANTS.  

It was effort.  

It was heart.  

It was the feeling that this young team was trying to build something and that every person who believed in it could become part of the journey.  

Lisa attended another GIANTS game soon after. There, she met supporters Bobby and Dean Thompson, who immediately realised that she was new.  

They did not allow her to remain on the outside.  

They welcomed her.  

They explained the club, the supporter group, the cheer squad, and the different ways she could become involved. It was Lisa’s first glimpse of what would become the most important part of her connection with the GIANTS.  

During her first season, Lisa attended a fan day and purchased a small membership package. Despite following sport for most of her life, she had never become a member of any team before. The GIANTS were the first.  

She also met Shane Mumford that day, turning the connection that had begun with his mother into genuine admiration. She soon became one of his biggest supporters.  

But it was not only one player who kept bringing her back.  

It was the accessibility of the club, the warmth of the membership staff and the generosity of the supporters around her. The GIANTS did not feel distant or unreachable. They felt personal, a family that was still being built.  

In 2016, Lisa found her place within that family.  

At another fan day, she came across the GIANTS cheer squad and learned more about the people responsible for making and raising the banner.  

She had always been fascinated by it.  

For Lisa, the banner represented the true beginning of match day. It set the mood inside the stadium, carried the supporters' message, and became the first thing the players saw before running onto the field.  

She wanted to be part of that moment.  

What appeared simple from the grandstand required hours of preparation. Banners had to be measured, assembled, taped, painted, transported, and carefully raised. Behind those brief moments on match day were people who gave their time because they believed in the club. 

Lisa became one of them.  

Week after week, season after season, she continued showing up for both the AFL and AFLW teams.  

The banner crew soon became more than a match-day activity. It gave Lisa friendships, responsibility, and a deeper connection with the club.  

That connection grew stronger when she began travelling to away games.  

Following the GIANTS gave Lisa the opportunity to visit the sporting grounds she had once dreamed of seeing. She travelled to Adelaide Oval, the Gabba, the MCG, venues across the country. She arrived early with the banner crew and walked turf she had previously known only through television.  

The first time she stepped onto the MCG, she kissed the grass. For a lifelong sports lover, the moment carried more meaning than she could explain.  

But the travel was never only about the stadiums.  

It was about the people who travelled together, the supporters they met in different cities and the communities, and the communities slowly forming around the club.   

As Lisa recalls, in the early years, the banner crew would sometimes arrive at an away game without enough people to raise it. Lisa and the others would walk through the stadium, searching for anyone dressed in orange, and ask them to help.  

Every orange scarf became a possibility. Every unfamiliar face could become part of the crew.  

Today, those searches are becoming a thing of the past.  

Melbourne has developed a strong group of GIANTS supporters. Adelaide has built its own community. In Canberra, new volunteers have attended banner-making sessions and discovered how much effort goes into creating something that appears for only a few moments before the game.  

Lisa has watched that change from close range.  

She remembers searching the stands for enough supporters to hold the banner.  

Now, supporters arrive hoping for the opportunity to raise it.  

That transformation means more than crowd numbers or membership figures. It shows that the club has found its way into more lives.  

It shows that the family Lisa discovered in 2015 has continued to grow.  

She understands how that happens because she remembers what it felt like to be new; she remembers Bobby and Dean welcoming her, explaining the club, and showing her how to get involved.  

Now, when new people arrive at banner-making, Lisa helps offer them the same welcome.  

She sees their surprise at the work involved. She watches them raise a banner for the first time. Some return the following week, then the week after that, slowly becoming familiar faces.  

That is how a football community grows. One person is welcomed. Then that person welcomes someone else.  

Through the banner crew, Lisa also developed meaningful relationships with the players.  

Shane Mumford remained one of her earliest favourites. Even after moving into coaching, he continued to acknowledge her, joke with her, and give her a bump whenever he passed.  

The small interactions mattered, reminding her that the people working quietly behind the scenes were still seen.  

Callan Ward always seemed to have time for a smile or a greeting.  

Lisa also fondly remembers an interaction with Stephen Coniglio. She had attended a captain’s run in Sydney before travelling to Alice Springs. When Coniglio saw her again at a pre-game function, he remembered that she had been in Sydney only days earlier. 

For a player who meets countless people, remembering her face meant more than he may have realised.  

It made Lisa feel recognised, that the time she had given the club mattered.  

Lisa found the same warmth within the AFLW program.  

One of her fondest memories came when Alicia Eva, Rebecca Beeson and Alyce Parker helped the crew prepare a Pride Round banner. They did not simply arrive for a photograph.  

They worked alongside the supporters, contributing to the same tradition and showing genuine appreciation for the people who supported them every week. 

For Lisa, that moment captured the true spirit of the club.  

Players and supporters, standing in the same room, contributing to the same tradition.  

Over more than a decade, Lisa has watched the GIANTS change.  

She has seen a young club develop its own identity. She has watched the Orange Tsunami become part of the AFL’s language and seen the team grow into an opponent nobody wants to face in September.  

The club is no longer simply trying to establish itself, but has created traditions, communities and memories of its own.  

Lisa has witnessed many of them. 

Brent Daniels' goal at the Gabba during the 2019 finals campaign remains one of her favourites. She remembers Jeremy Cameron winning the Coleman Medal and the supporters chanting his name.  

She remembers the games in which the GIANTS found a way to surprise everyone. 

But one memory remains above the rest.  

The 2019 Grand Final.  

Walking onto the MCG with the banner crew was unlike anything Lisa had experienced before.  

The noise filled the stadium. The atmosphere could be felt through the ground. For a few moments, Lisa stood on football’s biggest stage holding the banner for the club that had changed her life.  

The result brought disappointment. The moment itself remains untouched.  

She still remembers the tingles.  

Four years prior to that moment, Lisa had entered a GIANTS match wearing the colours of their rivals, trying to understand a sport that felt foreign to her.  

On Grand Final day, 2019, she walked onto the MCG on Grand Final day in orange.  

Her journey with the Giants had taken her from the grandstand to the field, from a curious spectator to a member, and from a newcomer to one of the people helping to hold the community together.  

Lisa has watched the club grow.  

She has grown alongside it.  

The GIANTS gave her friendships, memories and a place within Australian football. In return, Lisa gave the club something equally important. Her time. Her commitment. Her willingness to keep showing up.  

Before every match, the players run towards a banner made by people who believe in them.  

Lisa is one of the people holding it steady.  

She has witnessed the supporter base grow from a handful of people being recruited from the stands into communities that now arrive ready to represent the club across the country.  

She has not simply watched that growth.  

She has helped create it.  

Lisa Salas did not simply find a football club.  

She found a place where she belonged.  

Then, week after week and banner after banner, she helped build that place for everyone who came after her.