AFL TIPS: GWS v Hawthorn

Saturday, September 6 – 3.15 PM AEST – Venue: ENGIE Stadium

This should be a cracking contest with both teams prepared to run and carry and use the angles to move the ball down the ground with precision kicking. Very pleased to see the game is at ENGIE Stadium!

The Giants have some decisions to be made at selection and for mine they should bring them all in, for this elimination final. Jesse Hogan, Jake Stringer, Josh Kelly, Brent Daniels and Stephen Coniglio add a lot of class and experience to the Giants, who I expect will make 5 changes to their team. We will find out on Saturday if it worked. Jack Buckley will have to wait another week and will be hoping the Giants can win to keep their premiership hopes alive.  

The Giants have been in great form without these stars with Finn Callaghan, Tom Green, Lachie Whitfield running riot and the captain Toby Greene making sure they played finals in 2025 with his last quarter heroics last week.

The Hawks have excellent talls and smalls up forward in Gunston, Lewis, Chol, Watson, Ginnivan, Moore and Dear and an excellent defence led by Sicily, Battle, Scrimshaw, Hardwick, Impey and Barrass and they don’t turn the ball over.

Will Day will be badly missed against the Giants gun midfield, but Josh Weddle will play after getting through 50 minutes of footy picking up 12 disposals in the VFL last week after recovering from his back stress issue. He will likely be the sub.  

Connor Macdonald, Dylan Moore, and Jack Gunston who earned another All Australian blazer are in form, but Jai Newcombe has slipped to 276 in the league player ranking table and Calsher Dear and Mitch Lewis need to kick some goals – will one of them be dropped to bring Weddle in, or will Sam Mitchell persevere with all four tall forwards including Mabior Chol?  

The ruck battle will be interesting with Meek and Briggs in good form. Whichever of them can dominate around the ground and kick a goal or two might be the difference.

Looking forward to seeing how the exquisite skills of these players stand up under finals pressure, with it all on the line!

Giants by 11 points

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