Coach Leon Cameron admits some of his GWS Giants have slipped in form but he's backing them to regain it.
Going into Sunday's AFL derby clash with Sydney, the sixth-placed Giants have lost their last two games away to Adelaide and Geelong to fall eight points behind the second-placed Swans, who have won their last three.
"I'd have to say we were down by five or 10 per cent in some areas, the defensive side of it hasn't been the best in the last two weeks," said Cameron on Tuesday.
"But I'm proud that we hung in games where this time last year we would have had six or seven goal losses instead of 10-point and 20-point losses.
"We've just had some players that are probably not contributing at the level that they were in the earlier part of the year.
"But I'm confident that they can find their way back to that sort of form. It's hard to be up for 22 weeks."
The Giants are coming off back-to-back losses for the first time this year.
"We can't just think that you lose two and you bounce back after that, it doesn't happen," Cameron said.
'You can't just think that the Swans are going to be off - very rarely are they off.
"Out of the 11 games they've only been beaten twice, marginally."
The Swans game represents the final leg of a torrid four-match stretch against fellow finals aspirants which started with a home win over the Western Bulldogs.
"You don't want to have just really good honourable performances and come away with no points," Cameron said.
"We're 7-4 at the halfway mark. We always knew that this part of the year was going to be really tough in terms of the quality (of opposition).
"There's some real A grade sides out there and we've played a couple and we're coming up against an A grade side this weekend."
Cameron said a decision would be made later in the week on whether veteran midfielder Ryan Griffen would face the Swans after missing six games with a back injury.
He said defender Adam Kennedy was likely to miss a second week with a sore shoulder.
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