Greater Western Sydney coach Leon Cameron admits his battling Giants’ backs are against the wall as they try to snap their form slump in Saturday’s AFL home clash with Fremantle.
The Giants have won only one of their last six and dropped from first to third after a winless run of four games, with two draws followed by two losses.
While Cameron rated their first quarter against the Tigers last week as probably their best in in two months, he deemed their efforts in the middle quarters against Richmond as unacceptable.
“Right now our backs are against the wall because of our form,” Cameron said on Friday.
“It’s our doing, it’s our issue, it’s no-one else’s.
“We’ve got to make sure that we find that energy and effort to participate for 120 minutes instead of 60.”
While GWS have been regarded as finals certainties throughout the season and are still well placed, Cameron wasn’t focusing on generating momentum beyond Saturday.
“I think we can’t really talk about finals at the moment,” he said.
“We haven’t qualified, The momentum we need to build is the game tomorrow against a really good outfit that are well structured, well coached and play really good defence and they play well on the road.”
Cameron said it wasn’t the most testing time of his coaching career, which he thought was when the Giants suffered two 100-point plus losses in the first eight rounds of his debut season in charge.
It’s been another week of injury ins and outs for GWS.
Star forward Jeremy Cameron and vice captain Stephen Coniglio are back, the latter for just his third game of the season following two ankle injuries.
On the minus side, veterans Steve Johnson and Shane Mumford are both out injured and Toby Greene is suspended.
Former Geelong ruckman Dawson Simpson will play his first senior game for GWS, while former Docker Matt de Boer has been recalled.
Luke Ryan and Brennan Cox were among four inclusions for Freo, after both were omitted last week for not meeting team standards.
“They are good lads, they were disappointed in themselves, they knew they’d let themselves down,” coach Ross Lyon said.
He has drawn some encouragement from the Giants recent stumbles.
“It’s shown they can be beaten, we’ve got to compete from the start to the end, but its a big challenge,” Lyon said.
