Stuart Dew concedes Gold Coast must quickly find a way to stop leaking late goals as the Suns head into a gruelling crush of games that could define their AFL season.

Gold Coast have had 10 days to stew on their tight loss to the Western Bulldogs, but Sunday’s clash with GWS at Metricon Stadium is the first of four games in 16 days.

The compressed part of the season could make or break the Suns’ finals tilt, with clashes against contenders St Kilda, Essendon and Richmond to follow in quick succession.

The loss to the Dogs was their third in four games and Dew has pinpointed late lapses coming out of defence as the key issue.

“At the moment we’re giving up some easy goals,” Dew said on Friday.

“In the Melbourne game, in particular, we gave up some late easy goals, so we’re just trying to tidy that up.

“We’re getting enough looks forward. We anticipate that will pay off, but we’re giving up easy goals which takes the pressure off (the opposition).

“We’ve been giving goals back so we’ve just got to make sure that our ball use coming out of defence is a lot cleaner.

“Everyone plays a part in that … it’s an all-over ground thing that we think we can tidy up.”

Gold Coast were the talk of the competition after four rounds when they were second on the ladder with a 3-1 record, but have slid to 10th as their form has wavered.

The 12th-placed Giants have the same 4-4 record going into Sunday’s encounter, but showed some promising signs in a 12-point win over the Tigers last week.