GREATER Western Sydney star Jesse Hogan has revealed that he feared his 2025 season was over at one stage but says he has renewed hope that he can overcome the pain in his foot and play in the finals.

Last year's Coleman Medallist has featured in just three of the Giants' nine games since their mid-season bye and sat out the final three matches of the season after limping off in the heavy loss to the Western Bulldogs.

It was after that game that he thought his season was done, but a subsequent meeting with a specialist assured the 30-year-old that he couldn't do any further damage to his foot by playing on it, he just had to try to manage the pain.

There has been some encouragement in that endeavour over the last fortnight and if he can get through the next week without any setbacks, Hogan will be a chance to take on Hawthorn in next Saturday's elimination final at Engie Stadium.

"It's been a pretty tough six or seven weeks, there have been doubts over whether I would pull the pin and call the season off early or give it another chance," Hogan told AFL.com.au.

"I've seen a couple of specialists and the specialist who repaired me in 2019, we had a good chat about it, and thought we'd give it another go.

"It's feeling pretty good. I've still got a lot of boxes to tick and conversations to have but it's tracked pretty well the last two weeks so there's promising signs.

"I can't say definitively either way (whether he'll play the first final or not). It's training session by session at the moment, but I pulled up well the other day. We're giving ourselves every chance, it's progressing in the right direction."

Hogan did his first stint of running earlier this week in what is a major step forward for him considering there were no pain setbacks in the days that followed.

Whether he can get through training at full pace between now and the Hawks final is another question but the situation as it stands is a far cry from the 88-point loss to the Bulldogs that saw him trudge off with just three disposals to his name and his season seemingly in tatters.

"We knew that game was going to be a bit of a risk. I had in incident early and tried to get through and I was pretty dishevelled after. I thought it was over and I was going to be having surgery the next week," Hogan said.

"But after meeting the specialists we were able to revise the plan and then having three weeks off legs completely, the pain subsided. 

"The navicular bone itself wasn't too bad it's just the bone spurs around it that were flaring up and causing a bit of stress to the point where my performance wasn't there. I've given them a chance to settle down and I'm reloading now off a little break and giving myself a chance to get out there and give it another go.

"Every footballer at this time of the year is playing through something. You're just trying to get to 90, 95 per cent to be honest. When it's your foot it's a bit harder cause you need it for everything but there's ways you can deal with the pain.  

"As long as it's not going to get worse, which I've been assured it's not, it's something you can play through."

If the worst case does eventuate in the next week or during the finals and Hogan is ruled out for the September campaign, it would rob the Giants of their No.1 avenue to goal and a key forward who at his best is arguably without peer in the competition.

But with captain Toby Greene back to his destructible elite form and the likes of Jake Stringer and Brent Daniels set to return in the finals to partner Aaron Cadman, Darcy Jones, Callum Brown and Jake Riccardi in attack, Hogan is adamant the Giants can win their first premiership without him. 

"Absolutely we can. We've had to win in heaps of different ways this year with a variety of key players out. We still won 16 games. The beauty of this team is we don't rely on just one player and we win in different ways," he said.

"We've evolved our team to react to when sides try to shut us down in different ways. We have many different avenues to goal. Whether I'm in the team or not we're a big chance to go all the way."