Greater Western Sydney not true "westies"
01 Jun, 2012 03:53 PM
Singer Roseanne Cash once famously said shed put the c.......back into country.
Well, it can now be said the Western Sydney Giants have taken the western out of the GWS.
That GWS is now false advertising.
Call the minnows the Sydney Giants, call them anything, but the AFL cant pretend the club represents the golden west.
This follows the announcement the Giants will play home games at a new super-duper stadium at Homebush, for which the taxpayer has tipped in a lazy few million, and have a new superduper training facility at Homebush, to which the taxpayer will tip in a lazy few dollars.
The Olympic Park complex at Rooty Hill will host a token few games until the superduper Homebush home is fully up and running, and the Rooty Hill base will be a future academy for budding youngsters.
Note Rooty Hill, not Blacktown.
Media consumers will be used to the west regarded as some homogeneous mass somewhere outside of Strathfield, and the medias having scant acquaintance with geography and demographics.
Thus someone can refer to the inner-western Sydney suburb of Westmead on the television news, we can have Lalor Park in Sydneys northwest and Auburn in Sydneys southwest.
Apart from knowing these descriptions are plain wrong, westies would know the suburbs are worlds apart in character.
Hardly an homogenous potential audience for the Giants among those three, and that could apply to any number of suburbs described as Sydneys west.
Its forgiveable that the Victorian media could refer to the Giants as being based in Blacktown.
The Sydney media should know better, however.
Rooty Hill aint in Blacktown.
Its enough to make the good folk of Rooty Hill boycott the Giants, despite coach Kevin Sheedys superlative spruiking.
But then Rooty Hill and surrounds havent so much boycotted the Giants as ignored them.
The Giants were always starting from nil-interest in a rugby league heartland that takes in Blacktown and Rooty Hill and considerable surrounds, Penrith-Windsor and considerable surrounds, Campbelltown and considerable surrounds and Parramatta-The Hills and considerable surrounds.
Homebush could almost be classed as the inner-city these days.
It aint the west.
If the Giants wanted to win ultimate recognition and loyalty in the west, they would have been better off playing their home games at Rooty Hill before 10,000.
They might get 25,000 to Homebush, but those spectators wont be coming from Blacktown, Rooty Hill and Penrith in numbers.
The club can call itself the Sydney Giants or the Homebush Heroes.
Its a joke if it claims to represent western Sydney and such an association will be regarded as a joke, an example of AFL arrogance and hubris too far.
