Just six hours ahead of Greater Western Sydney’s fourth AFL draft, coach Leon Cameron made a definitive statement about his team’s prospects.

“I’d be really disappointed if we were not playing finals within two years.”

Even allowing for the fact the 42-year-old was sitting in a Gold Coast restaurant with the last bite of lunch still settling in his stomach, it was a rare moment of candour for a senior coach.

But Cameron is no fool. He doesn’t make such statements on a whim.

After one season as senior coach, he has seen from close proximity the group progress in his two years with the GIANTS.

He had just enjoyed a trade period that resulted in the club acquiring a genuine A-grade midfielder in Ryan Griffen from the Western Bulldogs and a first-class defender in Joel Patfull from the Brisbane Lions.

Both moves complemented the successful recruiting of premiership players Shane Mumford and Heath Shaw a year earlier.

The first few weeks of pre-season training had been solid and the players, young and old, had indicated a willingness to keep fronting up, relentlessly attacking the program. It was, Cameron hoped, a habit that would be hard to break.

Its new permanent base at Sydney Olympic Park, with Tom Wills Oval, a modern gym and first-class rooms and the arrival of highly credentialed fitness director, David Joyce, had improved the players’ psyche.

“At times (in the past three seasons) you would get lost going out to the training track because you were not sure where the training track was,” GIANTS co-captain Callan Ward said.

GWS won six games last season to make it nine from 66, including a win in the final round of the season against the Western Bulldogs.

The combination of all those factors was enough for Cameron to throw a challenge to his players.

“We know we have got to improve. It doesn’t matter how many draft picks you have got, talent is proven over time and they’re now starting to understand the hard work mentality that has to complement the talent,” Cameron said.

For opposition clubs, that signals giant problems in 2015, and beyond.

Ward is driving the message too that the foundation has been laid, now it is time to make another step.

“Once you get up to about the 40 or 50 game mark I think that is when you really start to realise how hard AFL is (and) tend to take the next step or you fall behind,” Ward said.

“We have plenty of guys now who can take that next step.”

On the brink are a bunch of GIANTS who have now played around 40 to 60 games.

Eleven players sit in that category: Devon Smith (59 games), Adam Treloar (58), Adam Kennedy (54), Toby Greene (53), Jeremy Cameron (51), Dylan Shiel (50), Tomas Bugg (49), Curtly Hampton (46), Adam Tomlinson (45), Stephen Coniglio (44) and Will Hoskin-Elliott (39).

All have displayed their precocious talent to a greater or lesser extent but are not yet considered elite AFL players.

Throw in Lachie Whitfield and Josh Kelly, the injured Jonathon Patton and the experience of Tom Scully and Phil Davis and suddenly the coach’s statement on draft day looks positively cautious.

Adding the experienced Griffen, who Ward says simply “has been a star of the competition for 10 years now”, rounds things off.

Cameron does not undersell the mission.

“We want to create that culture of success. We want to be a premiership team. We’re here to win premierships and we’re here to change the lives of our supporters so they actually walk into work on Mondays and say ‘how about my club? what about the GIANTS?’, Cameron said.

Treloar, an energetic footballer that turns half chances into certainties, said the coach’s challenge has resonated.

“We know talent can only take you so far. It’s all about hard work and the dedication and sacrifices we make for each other,” he said.

Behind the hard work and skill development however lies one intangible, a factor impossible to measure during pre-season but one all successful clubs carry.

“Belief is massive,” Cameron said.

Belief.

It is a word Shiel uses when asked where improvement can be found.

“We have to believe that we can win,” Shiel said.

His running goal against Carlton in round 14 is a demonstration of that belief, when he exploded off half-back like a hot rod launching from the starting grid.

The goal set up the GIANTS for one of their six wins or the season and was the sort of move needed to turn the four games lost by eight points or less in the GIANTS’ favour.

One of those wins and three of the narrow losses were against the four clubs - Collingwood, Geelong, Hawthorn and the Sydney Swans - that have won every premiership since 2007.

There are more pragmatic indicators footy boffins point to as areas for improvement.

GWS concede to many scores from intercepts and was thrashed in third quarters.

The GIANTS led at half-time in the first four and the final three games of the season and just two more in between.

The team’s contested ball count dropped as winning more uncontested possessions became a focus.

“We need to find a balance between hard ball, loose ball, contested and uncontested possessions,” Ward said.

But GWS took steps forward too, leading the competition in tackle differentials, winning a reputation for grunt as well as class.

And it was dangerous around stoppages up forward, scoring 45 per cent of the time to lead the AFL in that measure.

“Every time after one quarter we were up in hardball gets and tackles, we were up on the scoreboard as well,” Ward said.

Treloar said it was up to each individual to prepare properly so the hard aspects of football became second nature.

“I want to improve my transition running ... I want to be able to help out the backline and try to turn the ball over so we can get more goals.”

Cameron’s team-oriented message is getting through. The experience is yielding dividends.

At the draft the GIANTS added six more players, with Jarrod Pickett, Caleb Marchbank, Paul Ahern and Pat McKenna selected inside the first 23 picks and Jack Steele and Jeremy Finlayson secured via the club’s academy.

Pickett added another element to the list, his electrifying speed unmatched at the GIANTS.

Cameron is at a club that represents anyone who wants to jump on board, starting in the melting pot that is the west of Sydney and filtering beyond.

He won’t mince words.

“We have got an opportunity to create our own history,” Cameron said.

Treloar knows actions speak louder than words and while the list looks good on paper, games are famously never played on paper.

“It’s always about wins but internally it’s about different things,” Treloar said. “We have our own little goals and our own little expectations we plan to meet this year.”

But it’s Ward who best sums up where the GIANTS have got to as they head into 2015: “I think we are starting to get to the stage where there is a lot more expectation, we can’t keep using the excuse you know we are young we are in our third year we’re inexperienced.”

This article was first published in the Official 2015 Yearbook of the Greater Western Sydney GIANTS - Pick up a copy of the GIANTS' Yearbook for just $10 at the next home game or at the club's Learning Life Centre.