The GWS Giants’ heartbreak has been laid bare after coughing up big leads two weeks in a row to be eliminated from the finals in straight sets for the first time in the AFL club’s history.
Just a week after a 20-point fourth-quarter lead went begging against Sydney, the Giants on Saturday night watched a 44-point third-quarter lead over Brisbane slip to 20 points with 8:30 still to play in the last term.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Josh Kelly speaks as Giants’ heartbreak laid bare behind live interview.
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The Lions then hit the front with 2:30 left on the clock, and when the final siren sounded GWS players sunk to the turf in anguish.
Several players looked to be on the brink of tears before the emotions well and truly spilled over for many in the rooms.
As veteran midfielder Josh Kelly fronted up to speak on the defeat, his teammates could be seen in the background still reckoning with the result.
The Giants’ 2022 No.1 draft pick Aaron Cadman wrapped both arms around his partner Alexandra and buried his head into her shoulder.
Cadman kicked one goal — the very first of the match — to end his second season with an impressive haul of 30, having bounced back from the pain of being left out of his side’s run to the preliminary finals last year.
Toby Bedford was also being comforted by family behind Kelly’s interview.
The 24-year-old missed out on Melbourne’s 2021 premiership, never playing a single AFL game that year, before making the move to GWS at the end of 2022.
He barely missed a game once he debuted for the Giants last year and played in all three finals.
Bedford has now ended his second season with GWS as an established regular boasting an important role as their lead tagger.
Kelly, meanwhile, said there were “similar things” GWS didn’t get right in both finals losses but the bigger questions surround whether they went too conservative.
“That’s two weeks in a row where we gave up a lead in a big game. We probably didn’t handle those moments good enough,” Kelly told Channel 7.
“Pretty devastating. Going to have to review it pretty hard and analyse those things. The group’s shattered. Yeah, it’s not good enough.
“I think the main message is learning from it. We’ve got to accept that we weren’t good enough this year. We had the belief that the group was good enough.
“In moments our best football stacked up, so we’ve got to be optimistic in that sense, but at the same time that it didn’t amount what we wanted it to amount to.
“Very disappointing but it’s a young group, it’s an exciting group, we’ll come back hungry and ready to go again.”
GWS coach Adam Kingsley said he was “bitterly disappointed” and suggested the players fell away under the pressure.
“We thought we’d learned our lessons from last week against the Swans,” he said in his press conference.
“Well tonight it was the same story unfortunately.
“It would appear we haven’t yet learned that lesson to still be proactive, to execute the system as best we can, to remain aggressive, to be aware of the opposition when they do roll the dice a little bit and roll forward as you do in those moments, to be safe and strong in contest and win the ball.
“We’re just not the finished product. I’ve been saying that all year. Unfortunately it’s evident, so that’s disappointing. We’ve just got to improve. We got some feedback today that we weren’t good enough.”