SITTING in fourth place with two rounds left to play in the AFLW, GWS Giants are daring to dream of a possible final berth in 2018.
It’s no easy task. The Giants will have to win their final two rounds and that means taking down the first-placed Western Bulldogs today in Canberra then the second-placed Brisbane Lions in the final round to be a shot.
Vice-captain Alicia Eva said the resilience shown by the team to bounce back from a 21-point loss to Carlton in round two to record their first win the next week over Carlton showed the mentality the side is playing with this year.
Now they know they must have the end goal of the final in sight for their final two games.
“We talk about taking each game or each week at a time, but you can’t ignore the fact that we can’t cruise now,” Eva said.
“The short nature of the competition makes it very cutthroat in that you can’t afford to have an off game.
“We’ve been really resilient, particularly after that round two loss to Carlton; our season could have gone one of two ways but we put our foot down and we bounced back really well the week after.
“It’s a big game [against the Bulldogs] and you do have to dare to dream a little bit and we can’t rest on our laurels at all this weekend.”
The Giants are without loss in their past three games — a win last week over the then-higher placed Fremantle adding to a draw and win before that.
Eva said their focus each week is to fine-tune a few areas from the week before and heading into today’s match it has been about coming out hard straight away against the Bulldogs.
“We want to make sure that we don’t have any slow starts this week. We started a little slow against Fremantle. We need to be on from the get-go,” she said.
“This week is really big. We’re coming off a win so we have momentum but we know that the Doggies are a really highly skilled team but we do our research.
“We have a look at how they’ve played but then also want to have a strong focus on how we play and what’s been working for us.”
