Bulldogs veteran Daniel Giansiracusa takes the final step of a family's football journey

Jenny and Joe Giansiracusa were leaving Etihad Stadium last weekend when the vastness of their football journey flashed before their eyes.

"There was a little boy sobbing, his Mum and Dad trying to console him, and he was just devastated," Jenny says of a young Western Bulldogs fan, distraught after another loss, pleading for the Sydney theme song to stop. "It reminded us so much of Daniel."

Way back at the beginning, little Daniel Giansiracusa wore a Hawthorn jumper and relentlessly dragged his father into an Altona cul-de-sac of modest brick veneers, in front of the house where his parents still live, a football under a slender arm, a child's fantasies swimming around his head. The gap between the light pole and a nature strip tree was the goals, and he'd commentate every kick, dreaming of where it might take him. "He knew all these stats," Joe says, "and he had dialogue."

Sometimes the neighbours got vocal too. "We'd get a phone call saying he'd knocked another shrub over," Jenny laughs.

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Football consumed him then as it still does, and his parents went along for the ride. "He made me sew a flag the size of a table, brown and yellow squares, so big he couldn't lift it," Jenny says. From the very back of the top deck at Waverley he hauled it skyward, father clinging to son and flag lest they both be blown away.

"And they lost," Jenny says, "and he was just devastated."

There will be sadness on Sunday, too, as a greying 32-year-old husband and father of two does the only thing that little boy in a quiet Altona street could imagine - for the last time. Jenny and Joe know their journey will end too, and they give thanks for every step.

Within the space of two generations, their son has added an unforeseen shimmy to the family lineage. Joe Giansiracusa's father left Sicily in 1932 and settled in Balranald aged 17. He and his brothers were market gardeners; sport - even Olympic games and world events - didn't register with them. "They just weren't interested."

Jenny's brothers played local footy for Landsborough in between working the farm, three generations tending Wimmera sheep, cattle and crops. "I was never sporty. My sporting interest started with Daniel in the under-10s."

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Bulldogs veteran Daniel Giansiracusa takes the final step of a family's football journey