Came across this tonight. Not a bad article on the big fella:
The continuing rise of history-bound Giant Jonathan Giles
Date
May 1, 2014
<a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.smh.com.au/afl/by/Peter-Hanlon'>Peter Hanlon</a>
Senior sports writer for The Age
At the start of Greater Western Sydney's big adventure, any speculation over who would make history by being the first Giant to play 50 AFL games would have centred on various young guns on big bucks, with the odd seasoned recruit thrown into the conversation. It's doubtful anyone nominated a 26-year-old who'd spent most of his four seasons on an AFL list playing SANFL reserves.
Kevin Sheedy identifies patience and persistence as the qualities that have taken Jonathan Giles to within two games of becoming that unlikely trailblazer in orange, and doesn't miss a chance to attach his late blooming to the game's spreading wings.
''The real story is, 'Where would he be today if the two expansion teams weren't invested in?','' Sheedy asks.
Working as a physiotherapist like big brother David is one possible answer. Or pursuing a career in the business management and property fields that also occupy the down time of a smart cookie who scored in the high 90s in year 12 and, according to his brother, ''didn't have to study too much, he just picks things up quickly''.
Almost certainly, he wouldn't be an AFL footballer. And through his efforts in the ruck and up forward for the competition's newest team, an influential one at that.
David Giles is five years older, but says ''Joff'' always threw himself into his mates' footy and cricket games, and the bigger boys didn't go easy on him. After moving to Adelaide to study physio, David remembers opening the door one day and having to adjust his gaze skyward. He asked his no-longer-so-little brother: ''Did you just grow overnight?''
The height from mum Libby's side missed David, but landed with Jonathan and big sister Rosemary. Christmas gatherings among a close extended family are towering affairs; Fremantle's Jack Hannath is a first cousin, and like Jonathan stands 201 centimetres tall.
His body took time to catch up. David still laughs at the ''classic picture'' that appeared on the front page of The Advertiser in his brother's first Port Adelaide pre-season, ''of this white, skinny, scrawny kid, with no tan''. Next to him was a similarly shirtless Matthew Primus – massive, bronzed, a human tank. ''The headline was something like, 'From scrawn to brawn'.''
Port's mission was to turn one into the other, but for all that David insists his brother toiled through four years on the list, he didn't play a senior game. Nor many for Central Districts, which had Jonathon Griffin on the Crows' list and long-serving big man Jason ''Buckets'' McKenzie among its number.
''He was very dedicated with his football, wasn't much of a drinker or a party person,'' David says. ''It was hard to see
him taking it so seriously and not getting the rewards.''
As talk circled that he would be delisted by the Power, David rang the club and left a message for then-coach Mark Williams. He was surprised when ''Chocco'' phoned back, so pleaded his brother's case. Williams told him he'd taken many similar calls from parents, but never from a footballer's brother.
Giles took it on himself to change, crossing to Sturt, starting pre-season before anyone else, working still harder to get bigger, stronger and better. He won the club's best and fairest, put his name back in the draft pool, and was rookie-listed by fledgling GWS. David Giles thinks Williams was by then in his corner.
''It's about self-belief, isn't it?'' says Phil ''Charlie'' Brown, his junior coach at Kapunda in the Barossa Valley, who Giles nominates as a significant early influence. ''Leaving Centrals was a pretty gutsy thing to do, you put pressure on yourself doing something like that.''
Faith has been a constant. Ian Giles is a Uniting Church minister, and David says his children's childhood Sunday's were filled attending three or four services in the Barossa townships that formed their father's congregation. Jonathan is still a churchgoer, only the flock around him has changed.
He lives at Randwick with Callan Ward, likes everything about Sydney bar the traffic, and has become what Port had hoped he would on that long-ago recycled front page. He recently confessed that skinny kid could barely lift the bar, ''and now I can put a few weights on the end''.
Brown says you wouldn't meet a better person, ''they're pretty hard to come by, guys like Jonathan Giles''. He is sure his best football is ahead of him.
Sheedy says he'll play over 100 games, a great result for any rookie, and is watching for further improvement in a 26-year-old from a football breed (ruckmen) he rates as generally placid folk, with some obvious exceptions (Neil Balme, Carl Ditterich, John Nicholls and Don Scott, for starters).
''When I went to Essendon, Simon Madden never had the killer instinct in him, but he eventually got it after so many games,'' Sheedy says. ''If he wants to be great he's got to be a bit harsher and a bit more ruthless in the game.''
David is as proud as punch, having watched up close a career that has never been smooth. Even after polling more Brownlow votes than any Giant in the club's first year and finishing fifth in the best and fairest, he says Jonathan's contract renewal dragged out and became complicated.
''He's had to go through a lot to get to 50 games in general, but to be the first GWS player to get there – touch wood – is a tremendous effort. He does deserve it, he's worked so hard.''
