Sydney coach John Longmire senses Richmond are in better form than this time last year as the reigning AFL premiers prepare for the home straight.
But Tigers counterpart Damien Hardwick says there's clear room for improvement and hopes his side will emerge from the midyear bye with renewed focus.
The top two teams in the competition will face off at Etihad Stadium on Thursday night in what could be a preview of the grand final.
Sydney are in the midst of a six-game winning streak and will welcome back veteran Jarrad McVeigh from a calf injury.
Longmire is nonetheless expecting a fierce challenge from the Tigers, who are set to be bolstered by the return of premiership duo Dion Prestia and David Astbury.
"Their form, if you're looking at their win-loss, it's a lot better than what it was this time last year," Longmire told reporters.
"So you can arguably say they're in better form.
"They've got the confidence of winning the premiership behind them, they've got enormous self-belief in the way they play and they've got a huge number of premiership players available this week, so they've got just about their best available team ready to play.
"They've got their tails up, we know it's a big challenge and it's one we're looking forward to."
While the Tigers have proven to be elite at supplying their forward line, Hardwick noted that his side's clearance numbers and contested possessions could be better.
"We accept that we're going to get beaten in certain parts of the contested ball but we need to improve a couple of those so we don't get beaten as heavily," he said.
"There's some things in our game that are going really well, and we're going to rely on those strengths to get us over the line, but there's some areas that we certainly feel we can get better at."
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