Garry Lyon has identified GWS as the “great wildcard” for the remainder of the 2024 season.
After a sterling start to the season when winning six of their first severn, the Giants hit a flat spot with three straight defeats between Rounds 8 and 10.
They then lost three of their next five and looked all at sea at quarter-time of last weekend’s home clash with Carlton when they trailed by 33 points.
But they rallied to kick 14 of the next 17 goals before eventually holding on for a 12-point win which saw them return to the top eight.
It is from this point on that Lyon believes the Giants, who last year played in the Preliminary Final, can launch themselves toward greater success as a major threat to rivals.
“I think they’re the great wildcard,” he said on SEN Breakfast.
“I’m looking at this ladder and you can make cases for a lot of teams – I think they’re the most interesting for me.
“If they can just gather their forces like they did last year, and I know we shouldn’t just say automatically that’s going to happen.
“But I still think they’re the one that if they get hot you wouldn’t want to be playing them.”
Last year the Giants went on a remarkable run by winning 10 of their last 13 home and away games to qualify for finals before forcing their way through to the prelim which they lost to eventual premier Collingwood by a point.
After turning their game around against the Blues on the weekend, coach Adam Kingsley hopes his side can do something similar during the business end of the 2024 season.
“It was against a really good team more importantly,” Kingsley said on SEN Breakfast.
“I think we’ve been building. We haven’t necessarily got the results and we’ve had a number of disappointing ones within that last two months.
“If you cast your mind to two months ago we weren’t playing good footy at all, we weren’t generating any inside 50s or being able to score. But as that period has progressed we’ve been able to generate really good inside 50s, it’s just now a matter of finishing our work and we were able to do that really well on the weekend.
“So hopefully it is the start of getting back into that sort of run that we had at the back-end of last year.
“We’ve got a challenging draw starting with Richmond this weekend.”
The 9-7 Giants next face the bottom-placed Tigers at the MCG on Sunday.