Emma Quayle is an award-winning journalist and draft expert who spent 16 years covering AFL for The Age newspaper before joining the GIANTS’ recruiting team in February, 2017. As one of the industry’s most respected writers and talent spotters, Quayle provides unique feature articles on the GIANTS emerging and established players. The Originals is her first podcast series produced by GIANTS Media.
The 2011 AFL National Draft was one of the first really big nights in the story of the GIANTS.
The club held 11 of the first 15 picks that night, using them to bring together a bunch of boys who had no idea what their brand new team would be like.
They weren’t the first-ever GIANTS. During 2010 the club signed up the 12 best 17-year-olds in the country, as one of its start-up draft concessions.
Phil Davis, Callan Ward and Tom Scully were among the uncontracted players lured from other clubs, while veteran recruits Luke Power, Chad Cornes, James McDonald and Dean Brogan helped steer the kids through their first few years.
Neither Tim Mohr nor Adam Kennedy actually ever got drafted; both were added to the list as players who had been passed up by other clubs in previous drafts.
Not many of the original Giants are still with the club, either. Some didn’t quite cut it. Power and co. retired. Others have moved on, to play for other teams.
But 10 members of the inaugural AFL squad remain and have played a significant part in turning their team from one that lost almost every week in its first two seasons, to one that has played off in two straight preliminary finals.
Along the way, they have helped create the club’s identity.
Over the next few months, we’ll sit down with each of them as part of a new podcast series called The Originals, to chat about their first seven seasons.
They’ll talk about what they remember of being drafted, the varying challenges that have come their way in the seven seasons since, and about what the GIANTS has come to mean to them.
Episode one will feature vice-captain Stephen Coniglio, drafted from Swan Districts in Perth to the GIANTS as the No. 2 pick.
