GREATER Western Sydney coach Adam Kingsley has supported his club's stance for game lengths to be reduced, believing the quarters should go back to the times used during COVID.
Giants CEO Dave Matthews said this week his club supported shortening the length of quarters to appeal to the Sydney audience, but pointed at in-game delays due to injuries and score reviews as the major area for cutting down dead time.
Kingsley, however, has gone a step further saying he is in favour of stripping four minutes off every quarter, prior to time-on, to the COVID-era duration of 16 minutes.
"I would like to see the game just a little bit shorter. The COVID quarters I thought were really good, personally I feel like it keeps the games closer," he said.
"You're still going to have five minutes to go in a quarter where teams will get a run on and it seems like it's more palatable for the audience.
"I liked the 16 plus time-on, but 18 minutes plus time-on could very well work.
"I don’t have an issue with the goal reviews and things like that as long as they make good decisions, which they do. I just think the live minutes are a bit too long but I might be in the minority there, I'm not sure."
As he looks to build on yet another stirring win away to Geelong when they face Walyalup at Engie Stadium on Saturday, Kingsley is also dealing with the lingering frustration that is Stephen Coniglio's glute injury.
Tagger Toby Bedford and forward Darcy Jones have been cleared to return in a boost for the Giants, but Coniglio failed to get through Thursday's main training session.
It means he will miss a seventh straight game with the injury that has been listed as a one-week proposition throughout that time.
"Tell me about it," Kingsley said.
"We do (need to investigate it further). We've been working with him on that but it just doesn’t seem to be subsiding at all. There have been scans and they've been pretty good so we'll have to assess that.
"This year has been really frustrating for him (Coniglio). We thought it would be a pretty short turnaround but it's been anything but that.
"He's just got to hang in there, find the issue and once we get it fixed, he'll be good to go."
Coniglio's absence along with that of Josh Kelly and Brent Daniels means the Giants are still light-on for experienced midfield operators against the Dockers, who are one of the best clearance teams in the competition.
As excellent as their performance was against the Cats, Kingsley wasn't thrilled with their work out of stoppage.
But the return of gun tagger Bedford is timely as Kingsley puts a plan in place to deal with Dockers stars Caleb Serong and Andrew Brayshaw in the middle.
"(Bedford) prepares for both and he'll get one or the other. That's how he typically manages his week so there are no surprises game day. And then it becomes a matter of who do we think is bobbing up and hurting us more and do we make a change." Kingsley said.
"They have more than just those two to be fair. They have some really damaging players. (Jordan) Clark off the half-back line is important for them, Shai Bolton is reasonable too."
Walyalup will head to Sydney after back-to-back defeats and with mounting pressure on coach, Justin Longmuir.
However, the Dockers' recent visits to New South Wales have been impressive, going down to GWS by only nine points last season and defeating Sydney just two months prior to that.
The threat of the Dockers at their best is not lost on the Giants coach.
"They generated a lot of entries against Collingwood," he said.
"They didn't capitalise on them all but no doubt they've gone to work on that so they'll be better off this week.
"They're certainly very comfortable, very strong defensively as well."
