Two minutes into the third quarter, Justin McInerney put through a running goal to give Sydney a 27-point lead over GWS, and warm the cockles of the supporters of nine clubs in the top ten on the ladder.
The Swans, it seemed, had answered the Giants’ early rally on either side of half time, punctuated by what from all accounts was a spray for the ages from Adam Kingsley; and were safely en route to a sixth straight victory over their crosstown rivals to give their own finals hopes an enormous boost.
23 minutes later, they trailed by 22 points.
Another half an hour after that, and the Swans had been dealt a 44-point drubbing, their finals hopes snuffed out with all the savagery of Toby Greene calling Tom Papley fat at half time.
Along the way, Gold Coast and Western Bulldogs fans were left cursing, and if you’re a Collingwood, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hawthorn, Geelong or Fremantle supporter, a chill should have gone up your spine.
The story all of those teams were hoping for – the Swans keeping their faint September dream alive at the expense of a costly loss for a contender – was smashed to smithereens.
GWS have never played a better quarter than their third at ENGIE Stadium to crush their arch nemeses. No team in 2025 has played a better quarter than that.
The result? The race for the premiership just got a whole lot more interesting. Because regardless of where they finish on the ladder, whether it’s top four or with a home elimination final or from the jabroni spots of seventh or eighth, no one, home or away, in any week of the finals, is going to want to get anywhere near a Giants team that can play like that.
To begin with, each of the Giants’ first four goals for the quarter, the ones that completely changed the complexion of the match, came in the most Orange Tsunami way possible: the back half.
Shutting them down defensively had been a cornerstone of the Swans’ control up until half time, with the Giants restricted to chipping the ball back and forth, desperately trying to find an option to move upfield by stymied at nearly every turn – to keep GWS, the second-best team this year at scoring from their defensive half, goalless for a full half in that regard was a tremendous accomplishment.
Worse still, the Giants were being pressured into turnovers: 13 of their first 18 defensive 50 possession chains were intercepted by red and white jumpers – it got up to eight from 11 in the second quarter alone – with the Swans managing four of their seven goals from that source.
Naturally, the returning Tom Papley was in the thick of everything good about Sydney – a crushing result seemed inevitable.
In the blink of an eye, though, all that flipped on its head. To go from not only being unable to score from the back half but also leaking like a sieve from turnovers from there, to kicking four consecutive goals from fast, length of the ground counterattacks, is a turnaround you just don’t see in professional football.
It was as if an orange and charcoal switch had been flipped: the stagnant, error-riddled, lacklustre Giants were replaced by, well, the Orange Tsunami.
Central to it all was Finn Callaghan, whose nine second-half disposals were of sufficient quality to be the only choice for the Brett Kirk Medal for best afield.
It was a domination reflected in a radical shift in the Giants’ possession heatmap. Here’s how it looked at quarter time:
Not the large cluster of disposals in defensive 50, liberal use of the wings as the Swans forced them wide to retain possession, and virtually nothing in the corridor. The Giants took 22 marks for the quarter, but just one came inside 50.
Things looked little better in the second quarter:
The Giants’ attempt to target the corridor more was readily apparent – in defence, they prioritised finding targets in the middle wherever possible rather than going into the pockets – but it still translated to precious little further afield. Yet again, they racked up marks – 52 of them by half time – but just four came inside 50, while the Swans, by virtue of their dominance through clearance almost single-handedly caused by Brodie Grundy, took control over the territory battle.
Then, the premiership quarter:
It’s worth noting that the Swans were still on top in clearances, so nearly all of those dots through the middle are from the Giants’ remarkable bursts from half-back, featuring either dazzling individual runs from Callaghan, Lachie Whitfield, Lachie Ash and co., or team plays in which fast overlap handballs slice through the Swans like butter and gave a forward line kept under wraps in the first half ample golden opportunities to hit the scoreboard.
Gamestyle is only one part of the dominance, though: the other part is that the Giants genuinely couldn’t put a foot wrong. Everything they touched didn’t turn to gold, it turned into that asteroid carrying $700 quintillion worth of gold.
Every single mistake the Swans made was punished with maximum prejudice – the crime of not seeing a Jesse Hogan set shot completely over the goal line cruelly exposed by Aaron Cadman and Toby Greene, for one.
From any angle, from any range, the Giants banged through goal after goal after goal – Harry Himmelberg’s 55m monster from the wrong half-forward flank for a right-footer had shades of Lance Whitnall and Aaron Hamill for Carlton in the 1999 preliminary final.
Even the footy gods were on their side: how this Kieren Briggs tumble punt inside 50 wobbled over everyone, bounced past two Swans, and landed straight in the path of a rampaging Jake Stringer, who finished the job with a scintillating snap from further out than should realistically be possible for a human to execute, I’ll never know.
The Swans weren’t just outplayed – they were blown off the canvas. This wasn’t a falling in intensity from last year’s minor premiers: they simply found themselves at the mercy of an opponent for whom nothing was impossible, and the sky was the limit.
The result was the best, most damaging, most spectacular, and most watchable quarter of football anyone has played this season.
For all Adelaide’s dazzle in their past month, for Brisbane’s relentless drive and laserlike kicking, for Geelong’s explosive run and carry, for Fremantle’s electric pace, for Collingwood’s ferocious pressure, I’m not sure any of them could have gone toe to toe with the Giants on Friday night at ENGIE Stadium after half time and dealt with it any better than Sydney.
To watch GWS was to watch a team with devastating power deciding, on a whim, to turn it on. Sydney might have felt like they were looking into a mirror of their own selves from last year – how many times did we see the Swans of 2024 stumble out of the blocks before responding with a devastating scoring surge to land themselves another brutal win?
Consistency doesn’t really matter if this is their ceiling – if you’re capable of kicking nine goals in a quarter, any deficiencies are quickly papered over.
For GWS, though, this result must be a stepping stone, not a cause for celebration.
They had claims on being the best team in the competition last season, and no one, not even the Swans, would have been more stung by the Lions’ premiership success last year, having had them on the ropes in their semi final choke job.
This is a club that, over a decade of near-unmatched success, have had countless near-misses: heartbreak in 2016, 2023 and 2024 with the finish line within reach, humiliation in 2019 on the biggest stage, premiership glory tantalisingly held out of reach in 2017, 2018 and 2021 in which a team chock full of talent didn’t quite put it all together when it mattered most.
Fate – and their own brilliance – has given the Giants another crack at the premiership that has seemed earmarked to be theirs since the likes of Greene, Whitfield, Stephen Coniglio and Josh Kelly were in their footballing infancy.
The challenge is theirs: produce a quarter like their third term against the Swans in every match from here on in, and the Orange Tsunami will be night on impossible to stop. No matter the time, no matter the place, no matter the opponent.
