IT’S BEEN the smooth moves and silky skills that have underpinned Lachie Whitfield’s outstanding 249-game career but those who know him best have been keen to press home another attribute in the week of his major milestone.

Whitfield will become just the third Giant in history to play 250 games for the club when he leads them out onto Engie Stadium on Saturday for a blockbuster clash with Geelong.

Perhaps it is those aesthetics that have led to so many merely focusing on the class of Whitfield rather than his courage when analysing his qualities over the past decade or so.

But that is the characteristic his coach Adam Kingsley was at pains to press home when asked what surprised him most about his superstar half-back when he took over the club in 2023.

And it’s a sentiment echoed by his captain as well.

“He’s well renowned for his skills and class, but he’s tough and his will to win is as good as anyone. It’s something that’s super underrated about him,” Toby Greene told AFL.com.au.

“He’s obviously not the biggest guy going around, but he puts his body in some really uncomfortable positions very frequently, and sometimes, you know, we almost ask him not to do that, because it’s asking for trouble in a way but he continues to do so.”

Also underestimated, along with his attack on the contest, is Whitfield’s role as a leader at GWS.

While others like Greene, Callan Ward, Steve Coniglio and Josh Kelly have been official mainstays in the leadership group, Whitfield’s impact as a culture setter has been slightly less glorified but very much impactful in his own softly spoken style.

A Cats’ curse and a Giant’s special milestone

The Giants will look to continue their strong recent record against the Cats as Lachie Whitfield prepares for game 250

“He’s just extremely selfless. He just wants to win. And he cares deeply about making sure we’re heading in the right direction, that’s really grown over the last five or six years,” Greene said.

“Even this year, coming back in pre-season he was one leading the charge with his standards. He’ll definitely say things when they need to be said. The work he’s done with Lachie Ash, he would have played a big role in getting ‘Ashy’ to where he is right now, one of the best half-backs in the comp.

A ‘bit of a blur’ is how Whitfield described his first few years at the Giants.

“We were losing games and getting pissed” was his rather franker assessment of the Giants’ playing group in their infancy.

And it is that fact that makes the 250-game milestone for a GWS player hit a little different to other clubs.

Whitfield himself revealed this week that he planned to serve out his initial two-year contract in Sydney and seek a move back home to Melbourne.

Thirteen years later and he’s still there, as a legend of the club, when so many others have departed.

A two-time All-Australian and two-time club champion who has been a major part of the cultural renaissance at GWS that helped deliver sustained success.

“Yeah it is probably a little bit different (the milestone) given where you start,” Greene said.

“You’re surrounded by 18-year-olds just trying to find our feet and as we know there’s only three or four of those guys left, which makes it reasonably special, and he’s been a big part in growing the club. It’s an incredible effort for him.

“Now it’s a proper high-performance environment. Expected to train really hard, expected to win games straight away. Expected to get better straight away. Whereas, I guess when we started that wasn’t really a consideration. It was just try and fit in. We knew we weren’t going to win, really. We knew we’re going to probably get smashed more than get close to winning.

“So it is a lot different now. To think that we’re one of the more competitive teams for the last 10 years, he’s a big part of that.”

It is a quest the core group of near-on inaugural Giants are obsessed with.

And considering their individual relationships and journeys as kids thrown together from all parts of the country, it would be one showered in high emotion.

“Knowing where we came from and knowing that it’d be the first ever premiership for the Giants, that’s what we’ve been trying to achieve the last six or seven years. We’ve come close a couple of times so it’s going to be sweet when we do, if, if we can get there, and hopefully we can make that pretty soon,” Greene said.

With three wins in their last four games, a customary second half of the season surge looks on track once more for the Giants as they narrow in on those premiership aspirations.

It’s a trend that’s taken place over the last two years under Kingsley and it’s clearly no accident.

“We’ve set ourselves up to be the best team we could be in the last eight weeks, and that’s now. So it’s by design, but you’ve got to make it happen. And we play some good teams in the next seven weeks, so we’ll find out where we sit,” Greene said.

There is a finals spot to lock up first though which is proving to be quite the challenge for many embroiled in the top eight race.

The tests en route to that don’t get much tougher than the Cats at the moment but that is one side the Giants clearly have the wood over recently. They’ve won five straight games at GMHBA Stadium and six of their last eight against Geelong all up.

“I mean, we lost Wardy’s 300th, that was the really big one,” he said.

“A couple of those games were certainly backs against the wall and now this game as well. If you want to play finals you’ve got to win these games so it’s the same sort of set-up, and hopefully we can get it done for ‘Whitters’ on the weekend.