The Western Bulldogs don’t know what to expect of the form of GWS or how their ground will play in their AFL clash on Sunday, but one known fact is they need to win.

Sitting outside the top eight in 10th, the Bulldogs can’t lose either of their final two games if they hope to play in September.

They host Adelaide, who are currently ninth and in an equally desperate position, in the final round.

“We can’t afford to slip up and that’s something that’s driving us,” Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge said on Thursday.

The Bulldogs are coming off a 104-point win over Essendon, which Beveridge said had energised his team.

The Giants, who sit sixth, were thumped by struggling Hawthorn last round by 56 points but before that had three successive wins including a big win over finals-bound Collingwood.

Beveridge said it was difficult to plan for the Giants clash because he wasn’t sure what they would throw up.

“You talk about coaching teams but Leon (GWS coach Leon Cameron) has coached a lot of different teams this year because they’ve had significant injuries,” Beveridge said.

“There’s some uncertainty this week with their personnel so they will have a different team again so that uncertainty is not always a good thing for the opposition in planning because there’s no foothold on what they’re going to look like and what they’re doing.

“There’s an element of insecurity from our point of view because we don’t know what we’re going to get.”

The Dogs won’t travel to Sydney until Saturday afternoon after having their final training session in Melbourne and will visit Giants Stadium on arrival.

Beveridge said many of their players were unfamiliar with the GWS home ground.

“We played them there at the start of last season so almost 40 rounds have gone so we’re not overly familiar with the ground,” he said.

“The distant memory of 2016 (when they won the preliminary final over the Giants) is long gone.

“We’ll walk over from our hotel and have a look as there’s a lot of players in our team who’ve never played there so it’s a bit of the unknown for some of us.”