AFL Comparison #9: Greater Western Sydney Giants

The longest named team in the Southern Hemisphere (I resisted the temptation to compare them to the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" on name length alone!) is also the youngest team in the AFL, having just finished its third season of competition on the footy pitch. GWS is not only young as a franchise, but its roster is insanely young as well - stocked with draft picks in its formation stages, and adding to it by being winners of the "wooden spoon" in its first two years of existence (the last place finisher), thereby picking up more top draft picks, their lineup averaged an age barely able to drink in celebration of its rare wins (three in the first two years combined!). Their progress was noticeable this year, moving up the ladder two places and winning six games, including a landmark, season-opening victory over its cross-town rival, the 2012 champion Sydney Swans, 99-67. 

The reward for their budding experience during the draft period just concluded? Trade some of it away for more draft picks! Although they did get veteran All-Australian Ryan Griffin in a ransom hostage situation trade with the Western Bulldogs, most of their roster got younger, incredibly, over the last two weeks. What it appears the Giants will end up doing, it seems, is continue to shoot for the future, rather than try to win now.

Their American counterpart: The Minnesota Timberwolves

The classic NBA example of "we're building towards a future we suspect we'll never reach" - they had Kevin Garnett for a decade...and never made the playoffs. They had Kevin Love for six years - and just kept hunting for pieces to put around him without success. They'd draft two star point guards in the same draft...GWS had four star full forwards - in a sport where you really can't play more than three. (That's part of the reason Tom Boyd wanted out - a number one draft pick that wasn't getting any playing time...)

The NBA planted a franchise in Minneapolis, probably out of misplaced guilt for the Lakers leaving forty years earlier (you realized the "Lakers" weren't named after any water feature in LA!). The AFL planted the Giants out in Greater Western Sydney (there had to be a shorter way to name them! We simply call them "GWS" all the time...)because they had this notion that the "greater Sydney" area would support two teams, not just the Swans. So in the three years of GWS, they've averaged less than 10,000 patrons at their home games (double that on the road, and the typical game at the MCG in Melbourne hosts forty to seventy thousand fans. 

Alternate American comparison: Jacksonville Jaguars
Maybe Jacksonville would be a better analogy...why did we need another team in Florida? Because the NFL thought the state would support another team...which is why the Jaguars are constantly the targets of rumors that they're moving (usually to LA, theoretically starving for a team). Here's an idea: let's make the Jaguars the team the NFL bases in London! Why not? They would pronounce the team "Jag-U-are", like the sports car, and give it a whole new feel - 

"What play do you run on fourth and long, coach?" - "Bomb. Play: bomb!" (That' play number 007!)