Giants building confidence in quest for history-making start to season

GREATER Western Sydney coach Adam Kingsley says his high-flying side can still add killer instinct to its game as it continues to push itself into the competition’s ‘elite’ category.

Sitting pretty atop the AFL ladder after four straight wins, the Giants face St Kilda at Manuka Oval on Saturday seeking the first 5-0 season start in the club’s history.

Kingsley admitted the momentum the winning run had generated was being felt through the club, but said the season still had a long way to go.

“We review each game and we try and treat each game in isolation, but the more we win, the more confidence we get within the things we’re doing, and certainly individual confidence goes along with that,” he said.

“But the reality is it’s a long season, we’ve still got five months of footy left, and we’re going to lose some games along the way.

“It’ll be how we deal with that, how we review and how we learn from it and how we perform the following weeks from those losses.”

The Giants tackle the Saints with an unchanged side from that which ground out a 28-point win against Gold Coast last weekend. It’s the second straight week that Kingsley hasn’t tweaked his settled squad.

St Kilda will debut Hugo Garcia and will have Marcus Windhager back from suspension, with coach Ross Lyon dropping Angus Hastie and Zak Jones.

The Saints are yet to truly find their feet in 2024, having fallen over the line to beat Richmond by seven points last time out, a week after a poor loss to Essendon.

“Ross Lyon-coached teams are always really difficult to play against,” Kingsley said.

“They’ll be really strong defensively and we know we’re going to have to execute our offense at a high level to score.

“We’ve been challenged at different times, certainly last week against the Suns was quite challenging in different phases and certainly St Kilda this week is elite in a couple of different areas.”

For the Canberrans in attendance on Saturday, Kingsley predicted an “inspirational” head-to-head battle between Giant Tom Green and St Kilda’s Jack Steele, with the locally-grown pair bringing strong form to Manuka Oval.

“(Steele is) a fantastic player, a fantastic leader of their club and that will be two competitive guys going at it and it’s gonna be great to watch,” he said.

“We’ve seen (Green) do what he does at stoppage and he’s done that for a long period, but the impact he’s having in transition now is pretty significant for us.

“He’s able to hit the scoreboard and he certainly helps our defence through workrate.”