More than 15 years on, Kevin Sheedy still looks back with pride on the ‘life-changing decision’ to become the GIANTS’ inaugural head coach.
Already an AFL legend and a premiership-winning coach with the Bombers, Sheedy was headhunted by the AFL’s CEO at the time, Andrew Demetriou, to lead the competition’s newest team based out of Western Sydney.
Sheedy went on to leave an indelible mark on the GIANTS, leading a side largely made up of teenagers through the club’s first two AFL seasons.
Looking back, Sheedy recalls the very early days and the first steps in forming an entirely new club.
“Firstly, I’m incredibly proud of all of it,” Sheedy said.
“I knew it would be a life-changing situation for me because I had to take my whole family out to Sydney, find a place to live and find a place to put a team in.
“Basically, my wife and I went up there and my wife picked Breakfast Point. She thought that was the best place to go and put the GIANTS.”
Breakfast Point served as a college-style residential hub where the GIANTS housed much of their playing group and staff during the club’s early years.
“My wife got 100 out of 100 for the selection and success of Breakfast Point,” Sheedy added.
Despite the huge obstacles the GIANTS had to overcome as the AFL’s newest expansion side in the middle of rugby league heartland, for Sheedy, failing was never a consideration.
“I never, never, ever thought it wasn’t going to work. It was always going to work,” he said adamantly.
“You're only going into this with the most positive attitude. You cannot go into a situation and a job like this with a negative attitude.”
One example of Sheedy’s positivity was the way he broke games down into quarters, giving his coaching staff more opportunities to provide positive reinforcement when wins were few and far between.
“We started rating quarters. We played 22 matches of four quarters, so I broke it down into 88 half-hour games.
“We also had our own points ladder system. We didn't worry about the AFL ladder.
“Every time we did something good, [assistant coach] Mark Williams and I, we focused on it and we really drove it home.”
Those small successes eventually led to the club’s maiden AFL win, a remarkable 27-point victory over the Gold Coast Suns in just the GIANTS’ seventh game. While much has been made of that win, Sheedy believes one player in particular was an unsung hero on that day.
“Well, the first win in Canberra, I thought Israel Folau was a hell of a winner.
“If you look back in the last quarter, in the last maybe 15 minutes, if you ever wanted to find a couple of little knock outs from a pack and a handball that results in a goal, go back and watch that game.
“People forget that we took a big risk putting Israel out there. I don’t think he knew he could do it, but I did, that was a great effort that night.”
Sheedy acknowledged that first win was an incredible injection of self-belief for his side.
“That win was huge,” he said.
“To be honest, I wasn't really believing that we were going to win a lot of games, particularly in the early years with the youth.
“We’d have these young 18-year-old kids who were pretty tired after three matches, and we'd have to bring someone in to replace them, and it would be another first-gamer.
“Some clubs don't even play one debutant in a year, and we were playing so many.
“The important thing about coaching in this situation though is not to take the players' love and belief and confidence away from the game of AFL.
“Even if they're beaten by 12 or 14 goals, you can't take that belief and confidence away from them. So that was really important for us.”
Sheedy highlighted two players in particular who, despite their own young age, played vital leadership roles.
“Phil Davis and Callan Ward really stand out as the two young men at the club who were put in leadership roles.
“Just imagine now going to be the captain of a team at 21 or 22. Other teams are generally having captains that are 27 or older. It really highlights what an achievement it was for Phil and Callan.
“They put their career on the line and really took the club on as great leaders.”
Another player Sheedy remembers fondly is someone now far better known for his work with the bat and gloves than in orange and charcoal: Australian Test cricketer Alex Carey.
Carey was a part of the inaugural GIANTS’ program; a side which played in the TAC Cup in 2010 and the NEAFL in 2011 in preparation for the club’s entry into the AFL. Carey, however, ultimately returned to cricket after being cut at the conclusion of the 2011 season.
“Alex Carey really was one of the great stories in the history of the beginning of the club,” Sheedy said.
“He was up against so many really great players, like Tom Scully and Jeremy Cameron, Toby Greene and all the others. But it really was about giving him an opportunity.
“In the end, it was better not to ruin his other career [cricket] and, thank God, because if he’d continued with footy then he never would have become a magnificent player for our Test team.”
A fond, early memory for Sheedy was the role The Palace Hotel played in establishing the club’s cultural identity, with the Mortlake venue the scene of many important events and decisions.
“We started with nothing. There was no ground. There was no club. So, we created a clubhouse, which was The Palace,” Sheedy said.
“It was just across the road from Breakfast Point, it was a perfect hotel for us.
“We needed a place where parents could come up to watch their kids play and grandparents could come from all over Australia. You need a place that was warm and enjoyable and where the ambience was good.”
Turning his attention to the present day, with the club having now completed 15 AFL seasons, contesting finals in eight of them, Sheedy believes the GIANTS must continue their mission to ingrain themselves in Western Sydney.
“This remains the most important development area in AFL history,” he said of Western Sydney.
“These decisions moving forward have to be thought through incredibly carefully and they have to be good decisions.”
