Eddie McGuire has endorsed a name change for the Greater Western Sydney Giants after club president Tim Reed opened the door to a rebrand.
The former Collingwood supremo on Tuesday night opened the can of worms surrounding the 18th AFL club’s identity, which has divided footy commentators since the league announced the license for a new team in Western Sydney in 2010.
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Reed told AFL Media a rebrand is something the club will “contemplate in time”.
“The most important part of a brand is what it stands for,” he said.
“And whether we’re known as the Giants, whether we’re known as GWS, whatever the word is, I think the most important thing is what it represents and that’s the brand of footy we play.
“It’s the club that we are. It’s how we embrace our members and really create a spirit of something that is bigger and greater than the individual parts.
“No one who you ask who lives in Sydney says ‘I live in Greater Western Sydney’. It’s not a term that people naturally identify with, so it brings no benefit to the club in terms of a brand.
“But equally the more important thing to me is that we’re known for playing exciting footy.
“We’re the team other fans like to watch if they’re going to watch a second game on the weekend because they know that fast moving tsunami that we bring. That’s more important to me than what the acronym is.”
McGuire responded on Channel 9’s Footy Classified by suggesting the club should broaden its net to outside of Western Sydney and Canberra.
“I just think the NSW Giants and get them playing as they are in Canberra and get the whole lot,” McGuire said.
“Sydney Swans. NSW, they (Giants) get the whole lot, don’t just look at one little pocket.
“They went with GWS because they didn’t want to call them the Blacktown Giants or anything else. They wanted to spread it out in much the same way as the Western Bulldogs have been able to do.”
The club has flirted previously with ditching the acronym or ties to a specific geographic location.
The club in 2018 made quiet moves to ditch the term “GWS” and to run with the “Giants” as the club’s sole official name.
The club has previously pushed to be recognised as Giants with all letters capitalised.
McGuire praised Giants officials for how the club has grown its brand despite largely failing to make an impact on hearts and minds in Western Sydney.
“I think the Giants brand is fantastic and I think NSW is pretty strong for them as well,” he said.
“Particularly if you get into Canberra. Canberra is where all the money is.”
McGuire has shown plenty of interest in the club’s identity, having infamously referred to Western Sydney as “the land of the falafel” as the club prepared to enter the competition.
Reed in 2024 also spoke boldly about the club’s expectations to grow.
“We’re building a generation institution,” he said at the time.
“We’re not building for this season or next season … we want to have kids that are coming now bring their kids. We want to be that club deeply embedded in Western Sydney.
“Is there room for us to grow? 100 per cent. Are we expecting to grow this year? Absolutely.
“ENGIE Stadium will sell out. Then it will sell out multiple times and then it will sell out to the point where we’ve got capacity limits and we’ll be talking about when’s the right opportunity for us to seek a bigger venue. And I’m absolutely confident that that will happen.”
Footy legend Gerard Healy last month dropped a bomb on the competition when he said just 97 children in the U13 boys category had signed up to play in western Sydney’s AFL competition.
The 1988 Brownlow Medal winner described the 18th franchise as a “trainwreck” for the AFL officials responsible for the project.
“We think we are expanding the game, putting up with empty stadia week after week. But the joke’s on us all who have been fed the expansion fable,” he said on SEN Sportsday.
“Thank God they (GWS) are a good club and team, and absolutely worth watching and supporting. But no one knows or cares where it counts, in the west of Sydney.”
The Giants’ home matches at ENGIE Stadium in Sydney Olympic Park have attracted crowds of 16,157 during Opening Round and another 9,149 against St Kilda in Round 2.
A crowd of 12,597 watched on in Round 7 when the Giants beat North Melbourne at Manuka Oval in Canberra.
Last year, 19,248 spectators watched the Giants’ Opening Round match against Collingwood at the GWS venue.
However, attendances hit a low last year when just 8,092 watched the Round 10 game against Fremantle.
