Josaia Delana’s name will join the SCG scoreboard this Sunday as the teenage small forward prepares for his AFL debut in the Sydney Derby.
A product of the GWS Giants Academy and a Category B rookie from last year’s draft, Delana has earned his place in Adam Kingsley’s side after a standout run in the club’s unbeaten VFL team.
The 18-year-old from Western Sydney will run out in orange against the Swans, completing a journey that began not with a Sherrin in hand, but a rugby league ball. Growing up in a Fijian household in rugby league heartland, Delana only picked up Australian rules football at 13.
MORE: AFL Coleman Medal leaderboard 2025
“It was never big anywhere,” Delana told AAP in December of AFL in his neighbourhood growing up. “None of my friends at school, none of my family, no one in the community watched or played AFL. Even now to put footy on at home on a Friday night, I’d get in early so I could watch at least the first quarter, and then it would be overruled by league.”
His first exposure to the sport came through Israel Folau’s cross-code switch. “I was like, ‘Why would he do that sort of thing? Like, he doesn’t even know how to play AFL. What a weird sport.’”
Twelve years after Folau’s headline-making switch to the Giants, Delana becomes the club’s fourth Academy graduate from Western Sydney to make the AFL grade.
From lunchtime trials to Derby debut
It was a lunchtime tryout at school that lit the spark. “They said AFL tryouts were on during lunch, and I was keen to go. I just went and had a crack,” Delana.
“Playing rugby league, I was always a bit of a smaller body and just running into the big Polynesian kids, it wasn’t too enjoyable.”
MORE: All the latest AFL injury news
Fast forward five years, and the electric small forward with an explosive sidestep is set to light up the SCG. Known affectionately at the club as ‘Joey’,
Delana has impressed with his clean hands, defensive pressure and team-first approach. His rise included eight games in the VFL, a standout performance for the Allies with 19 disposals and 14 tackles against Western Australia, and strong combine results that showed his agility and endurance.
Now, his debut marks a new chapter in the club’s Western Sydney experiment, one that began with a rugby league superstar and now continues through a boy who once thought AFL was “a weird sport.”