GWS winger Lachie Whitfield can’t imagine a more challenging path to an AFL premiership than this season.

Whitfield, among the Giants to depart NSW and head to their family homes during the COVID-19 shutdown, has returned to Sydney and is thrilled to now have a restart date of June 11.

The 25-year-old suggested the extended break would be a boon for injured teammates Callan Ward, who may return from a knee reconstruction in round two, and Tim Taranto.

GWS players, having banked an impressive round-one victory over Geelong as they seek to bounce back from a lopsided loss in the 2019 grand final, reminded each other of the bigger picture on Friday.

“We still aim to win the flag this year. There’s still that hunger. We had a team meeting on Zoom today and talked about the possibilities in front of this year,” Whitfield told reporters.

“It’s really exciting that there is still a premiership up for grabs.

“The team that wins it this year will almost have gone through the hardest way possible to win a flag, so kudos to whoever does it. Hopefully it’s us.”

Whitfield pointed to Ward and Taranto, who underwent a shoulder reconstruction in May, as two obvious examples of the Giants benefiting from the AFL stoppage.

“The other day I heard Heath Shaw talk about potentially playing on next year, so maybe there could be silver linings out of this,” he said.

Whitfield cautioned the standard of football is likely to be low in the early stages of the second phase of the stop-start season.

“But after a few weeks I’m sure everything will fall back into place,” he said.

“It’ll be good to get back amongst the group … there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. It now feels like all the training sessions we’ve done with no goal or end date have been worth something.”