Greater Western Sydney AFLW coach Alan McConnell says his rising club needs to tinker a little rather than a lot, after they were denied a fairytale finish to their campaign.
The Giants went into their final-round home game on Friday in third spot, two places above visiting Brisbane and in the box seat to push for the final.
However, it was the Lions who stayed alive in the shootout for the final, as they cruised to a 40-point win.
The Giants kicked the first goal, but the Lions slammed on the next eight, six of them in a opening quarter onslaught.
"Ten minutes of footy is pretty expensive," McConnell said.
The result snapped the Giants' four-match unbeaten run and wrecked their hopes of making the final after finishing last in the inaugural competition in 2017.
They still exceeded most pundits' gloomy pre-season predictions, ending with two more wins than last year.
But even though they took some giant strides in 2018, the pragmatic McConnell wasn't satisfied.
"We're better (than last year), but we're not where we want to be," McConnell said.
"We want to win the comp, we don't shy away from that.
"We gave ourselves a chance.
'We've probably had five poor quarters of footy and it's pretty expensive in a seven-week season.
"We need to look inside each of us, staff and players, and see what we can do better because right now we're not good enough.
"We'll use the next couple of weeks to pull that apart and work out where we go from here."
McConnell said it was too soon to say whether their impressive batch of recruits from interstate and overseas, including Ireland's Cora Staunton, would be back next season.
"We really haven't spoken at any length to anybody about any of that yet," he said.
"We'll spend the next couple of weeks going through all of that, but I trust we won't be starting again.
'We've certainly come a long way and we don''t need to start again.
"We need to tinker a few things, but not a lot, so time will tell where that goes.
"The AFL's rules still aren't clear about who we can keep and who we can't, so there's a bit of work to do in that space.
"It will be interesting to see now where the whole group sits and who wants to go again.
"Who wants to get back on the bus and the bus is going to be going uphill a bit because we're not quite good enough yet."
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