AFL Injury News: Greater Western Sydney suffer double injury blow with key duo ruled out for extended period 

GWS Giants are going to be without midfielder Josh Kelly and Lachie Ash for a while. The duo played in Saturday's loss to Essendon and later reported soreness with scans confirming the seriousness of the injuries.

They will be out for six weeks with calf injuries. This is a massive setback for the Giants, who are winless in three of their last four matches and have fallen to a 6-3 win-loss record even though they are still in the top half of the ladder.

According to afl.com.au, the Giants' head of medical James Rahme spoke to media and said;

‘It's disappointing news for both Josh and Lachie. They played out the game on the weekend with their calf issues only becoming apparent in the days following.

"They're both the ultimate professionals and will attack their rehab to return after the bye.”

Kelly is averaging 25 disposals, 4.7 marks, 4.1 tackles and 1.2 goals and Ash is averaging 19.7 touches and 3.9 rebound 50s this season.

Giants coach wants team to “sharpen up” after loss

The Giants look dejected after the round nine AFL match loss

The Giants started the last game well against Essendon’s in the first quarter and were up 4-1, but were not able to maintain the lead. Essendon won by a 20-point margin.

In the post match press conference, coach Adam Kingsley spoke about how his team was not yet at their best and had gone down to some of the top teams in the recent games.

"I just don't think we're playing our best footy and we've been beaten by three pretty good teams. Each of those teams you'd expect to finish in the top four to top six, I would imagine. What the feedback to us has been is that we're not quite at that level right at this moment and that's ok.” He said

"But we do need to sharpen up our game and make sure that by the end of the season we're playing our best footy. Our challenge between now and then is to be able to generate enough wins to actually qualify for finals, that's our first objective, and based on our last month of footy we're going to fail to do that so we need to address a couple of things."

"I think today we were beaten by a more desperate team, last week we were beaten by a more desperate team so we need to tidy up some of that, we need to tidy up some of our fundamentals.”

Kingsley praised Essendon for the way they pressured his team, their one on one work and their follow up work.

“I think they were 2.0 after quarter-time which is an outstanding pressure number and then they were far better than us in the contest. Their one on ones or two on two, it just felt like they had an advantage. Either it was their follow-up work where they were able to win it or the next man in.

"We weren't able to rectify that really at all after quarter-time.”

Essendon extended their unbeaten run to five games and took revenge for last season's 126-point mauling.