What an incredible sight it was at Blacktown Olympic park for the first ever match at our new home – to see 10,000 people packing out our magnificent ground to watch the Swans and the Blues battle it out … it doesn’t get much better than that.

It was a huge success for everyone involved – and we owe it all to the support of the community in Greater Western Sydney. Had it not been for the dedicated families and supporters who came along to enjoy the game on Saturday night this match would never have been such a success.

What was even more encouraging was to see that more than 80 per cent of the attendees came directly from Greater Western Sydney. There was incredible support from the local schools and clubs and we thank them for their ongoing commitment and their participation in this historic event.

The Blacktown City Council was instrumental in both the development of the facility and the event planning for the match. We thank the Council and Mayor Cr Charlie Lowe for their continual support and we look forward to working closely in the future.

We are extremely thankful to the team at Rooty Hill RSL who worked hard ensuring local families had easy access to tickets. They were without a doubt inundated with ticket enquires for the 10,000 people wanting to attend this historic match and they truly did an outstanding job.

In a credit to everyone involved and to all of those who attended, the security and police who oversaw the evening noted that the crowd was extremely well behaved for an event of this kind.

This really was the beginning of something big. Seeing the support of the community come out makes me even more excited about this new club.

Team GWS is about community involvement and engagement, which is why we launched our ‘name the team’ campaign at the game.

If you haven’t already, be sure to go online to nametheteam.com.au and send me your best suggestions to name our new AFL team for Greater Western Sydney. We’re looking for something big, bold and ambitious – a great name for a great team, this is one incredible region with so much to be proud of and we need to celebrate that.

Thank you all once again for being a part of something I know we will all remember for a long time to come.