When he was first appointed in 2009, the GIANTS didn’t even really exist. There was no name for the club, no colours, no coach, no players, and no home base.
Over the past five years McConnell has helped the club grow from an idea, to a fully-fledged AFL club with facilities and a playing list to rival any other.
McConnell began in football as a player with Footscray in the VFL in the 1980s. In 1995 he was appointed caretaker coach of Fitzroy when Bernie Quinlan was sacked mid-season and he was again in charge when Michael Nunan stood aside the following year
He was the final coach of Fitzroy before its merger with Brisbane at the end of 1996 and after working as an Assistant Coach at Geelong and the head AFL coach for the Australian Institute of Sport, he was appointed to the GIANTS on July 1, 2009.
“Being the first employee of the club is pretty amazing really,” McConnell said.
“To have been the last employee at Fitzroy and the first employee of a new club into the competition, I need to sort of pinch myself from time to time about the opportunities the game has afforded me.
“And the interesting thing is there are a lot of similarities, when you’re doing something that’s falling apart and when you’re starting something from scratch.
“So watching the club grow as opposed to watching the club disintegrate has been very exciting.”
After working as a forward line coach over the past two seasons, McConnell has taken over as Senior Assistant Coach to Leon Cameron for 2014.
“The senior assistant coach role is obviously significant in the sense that it’s far more coaching than I’ve been doing in the last couple of years,” McConnell said.
“I also have a mentoring role with the rest of our assistant coaches and obviously provide support on a more intimate basis with Leon, I guess because I’ve been around a bit longer than the rest.”
McConnell has a wealth of football knowledge and believes the GIANTS are beginning to find their identity.
“We’ve not really been able to put down our roots and say this is where we are, this is who we are, this is what we want to be,” McConnell said.
“In the last two or three weeks there’s been a massive growth is just those emotions within our group.
“There’s been a sense that what we stood for in the past has been talent and I think one would see that going forward it’s going to be more around hard work and professionalism and having a hard edge.
“Talent might get you onto a list and it might afford you the opportunity to play AFL football but it doesn’t make you an AFL footballer and in fact it doesn’t go anywhere near guaranteeing you success.”
Although he’s been around footballer for over 30 years, McConnell said being involved with the GIANTS is hugely rewarding.
“Every day you see change, every day there’s something, albeit it might be very small ,is done for the first time in a better way than the way that is was yesterday,” he said.
“I think the notion that we are on the right path ... as long as we stay true to ourselves and continue to work really, really hard and be honest and frank with one another, we’ll get some significant improvement and success.”
