Picking an AFL team

I've attended seven AFL games in my lifetime. The most memorable of which was a game at the beginning of the 2007 season between the Swans and the West Coast Eagles. The Eagles had played the Swans in the Grand Final the previous year, with the Eagles prevailing by a single point. This game, amongst 62,000 odd fans, failed to disappoint. Sitting right at the back of the stand, high above the field of play, it as possible to understand the appeal of Australian Football. The game flowed reasonably freely with a dramatic finish. The Eagles ultimately winning, like in the previous years Final, by a single point.
Since then I've struggled at times to understand the appeal of the game. Sometimes it appears to be too prone to being a blowout. Of the seven games I've attended, only one has been decided by less than thirty points. The game also appears quite slow at times, with teams struggling to clear the ball from the ruck area. I hardly watched any AFL at all, only tuning in around Finals time, and even then, only when the Swans were playing.
For some reason I started questioning who I really supported in the AFL. I was a Sydney supporter at the time of the two grand finals. But I asked myself whether I was only supporting Sydney because I was taking an interest in the game at the time of their success. I decided to do what I had done with other sports, and support the team my Dad supported. In this case that team would be Carlton. Carlton had become one of my favourite teams to watch in the weekly highlights package. Brendan Fevola was the single most entertaining player in the competition, having won the Coleman medal for leading goal scorer the previous year. He could seemingly score from anywhere and had a big personality to match.
The problem was I could never really force myself to watch a Carlton game like I could a Sydney game. I just kept telling myself that I had only supported the Swans because they were winning. This continued for the next three years until the announcement of a new AFL team in Sydney, the Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Giants. I decided to get on board and went along to the first game of the 2012 season between the Swans and the Giants. The thing was I didn't really cheer on good play by the Giants (even though there wasn't much to cheer about), but cheered on the strong performances by the Swans players.
As of this Saturday, I'm prepared to declare myself a Swans supporter. Yet again I'm questioning myself about whether or not I'm only supporting them because they're doing well. In this instance, this is not the case. No one really expected anything from the Swans this year, but I always put in the effort to check how they were going and watch the games when I could.
No team in the AFL is going to struggle more from the Swans success than the GWS Giants. The Swans are going to draw in all the casual supporters in this years finals run, and you can be sure that the Swans are going to go all out to secure their support heading into the future. As long as the Swans succeed on the field, the Giants are going to struggle to create a fan base.