Greater Western Sydney coach Leon Cameron has guaranteed Stephen Coniglio will captain the club next season despite his disappointing first season in charge.

Coniglio replaced co-captains Phil Davis and Callan Ward as the skipper this season but couldn’t repeat his brilliant 2019 season when he polled 17 Brownlow Medal votes from just 15 games.

The Giants made the stunning decision to drop their captain last week, but he returned last night and gathered 23 disposals during his team’s 52-point loss to St Kilda.

GWS won’t play finals and the club faces some key meetings in the coming days to determine how they fell from a grand final to outside the eight.

But Cameron said Coniglio’s captaincy wouldn’t be changed.

“Absolutely he will continue as captain,” Cameron said.

“I understand it was a huge, huge decision (to drop Coniglio). Whether people agree with it or disagree with it, that’s up to them.

“But we were really strong as a footy club.

“He was struggling. He is banged up. He needed a bit of a spell as well. His form was suffering from that.

“I was rapt that he responded and that’s the sort of leader you want. He didn’t wallow in pity.”

The Giants not only changed captains this season, they also changed the leadership group.

Ward and Davis were replaced by Jeremy Cameron, Lachie Whitfield and Toby Greene, while Matt de Boer and Josh Kelly remained to support the Swan Districts premiership player.

The Giants also made the decision not to appoint a vice-captain.

Cameron said Coniglio wasn’t the only leader who would need to assess what went wrong this season.

“We’ve had a challenging year with our leadership group. It’s a new leadership group and we’re going to learn a lot from it,” he said.

“But I’m really confident, extremely confident, with the guys in there that are going to learn from a year with what has happened.

“Some of the greatest learnings you have from your greatest challenges.

“There’s no doubt our young group in that leadership group will learn from it.”