Aidan Corr's journey from Northern Ireland to Greater Western Sydney

But it could have been a very different story.

Had Corr's parents, Ray and Catherine, acted on their instincts and returned to their homeland when Corr was just a three-year-old, he'd never have got his chance to play in the AFL.

Corr and his Catholic family, including older brother Cathal and sisters Elaine and Izzie, had been living in Perth since moving halfway around the world about seven months earlier.

The conflict between Catholics and Protestants was still bubbling away in Northern Ireland and Corr's mother figured raising their four children in Australia would offer them a brighter future.

"I've been back to Ireland a couple of times and it's just a different place," Aidan said.

"I did ask a few questions [about the conflict] and I didn't get much back in return, so I thought, 'geez, it must be touchy'. There was some pretty serious stuff going on back then.

"I couldn't believe it when I was driving around as a kid and I was like, 'Dad what's that?' There was this place that was fully barricaded up and he's like 'Oh, that's the local police station'.

"I couldn't believe what was going on. I just didn't really get it. You're driving down the street and the gutters are painted orange and it's just like, 'Oh, geez I probably shouldn't be here'."

Unfortunately for the Corrs, Perth wasn't what they expected and they decided it was time to move home.

Then fate intervened.

Just as they were preparing to head back, they were advised to give Melbourne a try. Almost 20 years on, they still call it home.

"They struggled: the heat was a big issue for Dad and they were missing home," Corr recalls. "We'd decided to go back and our next door neighbours said you should try Melbourne.

"We had the old Ford Falcon, we packed all our stuff in the trailer and drove across, drove the Nullarbor. It took us four-and-a-half days, we were all so young.

"The Falcon had the two bench seats straight across. It was a good effort by Dad.

"We were living in a motel for a week or two, then we found a place and we settled in."

Aidan's journey to the AFL had begun, but it would prove a long and arduous road.

Initially he played soccer, following in the footsteps of his brother, before Cathal took himself down to the local footy club.

Ever the impressionable younger sibling, Aidan followed suit. He was fairly handy in his early junior years, but went through what he calls a "dark patch" after graduating from the under-12s.

"My brother was pretty hard on me," Aidan said. "He was tough and I was mummy's little boy. I decided he had to beat that out of me.

"We'd be out the front kicking a footy. He'd drill them at me and I'd take a chest mark and I was rapt, and he'd spray me because it wasn't out in front.

"That was a bit of a turning point for me."

Cathal taught Aidan how to play a hard, contested game and also toughened him up off the field, in typical brotherly fashion.

"He's seven years older than me; we shared a room growing up, we had bunk beds," Corr said.

"He was a bit of a hard man. He rubbed that off on me a little bit, which was good. It really changed the way I went about my footy.

"One day I kicked him in the arse as hard as I could. I asked him to make me a sandwich and he said no so I kicked him. He just grabbed me, he was shaking me and I started crying.

"From that day on if I tried to wrestle him – I reckon now he'd still have me, he's a machine.

"I don't have too many brawls with him."

Aidan started out as a forward, but went down back for more opportunities at representative level, and that's where he settled. He went at pick No.14 in the 2012 AFL draft and is now an integral part of the Giants' back line alongside the likes of Phil Davis, Heath Shaw and Adam Tomlinson.

He made rare foray back to full forward against Fremantle earlier this year, sprayed his only shot at goal and was asked by Dockers fullback Joel Hamling if he was lost before being sent straight back to more familiar pastures behind the ball.

The 23-year-old still speaks with his brother almost every day. Cathal was once on St Kilda's list, but never played a senior game.

He now has a family of his own, and still plays for MacLeod, who finished top of Melbourne's Northern Football League this year.

Aidan, meanwhile, is desperate to help GWS to a maiden AFL grand final.

They play the Crows in Adelaide on Thursday with a second-straight preliminary final berth up for grabs, and Aidan says his side is ready to bounce back from their final-round disappointment against Geelong.

"We needed a bit of a wake-up call," he said. "We've just got to find that form we had for the month before that.

"The pressure we had for Melbourne and the Bulldogs was what we needed to bring against Geelong and it wasn't there.

"If we could bring that pressure [against Adelaide] that'd go a long way to stopping their star team. It's going to be a tricky assignment. We're well and truly up for it."