DURING Callan Ward's four years at the Western Bulldogs, he'd never been part of the club's leadership group.

The truth is, he didn't want to be. He was focused only on improving as an up-and-coming AFL footballer.

So you can imagine his surprise when Greater Western Sydney came calling with not only a lucrative, long-term deal, but also offering a share of the inaugural club's captaincy.

"It was something (GWS football manager) Graeme Allan asked me if I wanted to do," Ward says in this week’s AFL Record.

"In my mind, I never really thought I could be a leader."

Yet he was still intrigued by the possibility and at the tender age of 21, Ward decided to leave the Bulldogs and sign on with the fledgling club.

Shortly after making the move to Sydney to begin training, it dawned on him just how young and inexperienced those around him were.

The players quickly started looking up to Ward, so he decided to give the captaincy proposal some serious thought.

"I thought I may as well try it and if I didn't like it, that's fine, at least I could say I've tried it to be a captain of Greater Western Sydney," he said.

In February, 2012, he was introduced alongside Luke Power and Phil Davis as the Giants’ inaugural co-captains.

From that point on, he quickly started to shine.

"He's been excellent," former Giants coach Kevin Sheedy says.

He has grown steadily into the position, yet Ward's leadership has faced its greatest tests during this current season.

Some more heavy losses took a toll, while Toby Greene's alcohol-fuelled incident that resulted in an arrest and a string of assault charges was another major stumbling block.

For a club fighting to establish its identity, it was a critical moment, and the AFL world watched keenly to see how it would respond.