Britt Tully and GWS Giants ride roller coaster to AFLW finals

She did it last week amid fears the coronavirus would see the AFLW competition consigned to the scrapheap.

Now she will do it again as the GWS Giants prepare to leap into a revamped finals series in a sudden death showdown with the Melbourne Demons at Sydney Showground on Saturday.

The AFL scrapped the final two rounds of the AFLW regular season and will jump straight into an eight-team finals this weekend.

The top four sides from each conference have advanced to the finals and the path to the flag is simple: win and you move on, lose and you go home.

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It means the Giants are potentially three wins away from the club's first senior premiership less than a week after they feared their season was going to be cancelled due to coronavirus concerns.

"In the back of a lot of our heads was the thought last week would be our last game, just with the way the world was going with things," Tully said.

"We played it as though it was, and now we're lucky enough to get another week and hopefully a couple more after that, all going well.

"It's a bit of a weird roller coaster. The plan for us was to sit in that top two for as long as we could, which put us in the best place to make finals, and last week beating Adelaide put us in that spot.

"Everything happened and we managed to just slot in there, which was always our goal, but it has obviously come a little earlier for us than expected.

"We pretty much found out the same way everyone else did, we watched the press conference [on Wednesday] night and came to the realisation if we were in the top two, we were sitting pretty well there.

"To be honest we weren't really much ahead of the public when they found out."

The late decision has thrown plans for this weekend into disarray and seen Giants coach Alan McConnell ditch the playbook for what was supposed to be a date with the Geelong Cats.

Instead his side must now prepare for a side they hadn't banked on facing at all.

The Giants are set to get a huge boost with Alicia Eva likely to return from a foot injury should she get through training.

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Eva's return is a timely one given the Giants are searching for a calm head to guide them through a finals campaign which begins against a relative unknown.

"To be honest we haven't actually done a review on them or anything, we were preparing to play Geelong," Tully said.

"What we've done over the past two weeks has got us in good stead for taking them out and playing our game while doing it.

"Every team is in the same spot, Melbourne is probably doing the exact same thing with us now. The good thing for us is we trust what we have going.

"Hopefully that will get us over the line rather than worrying about them too much. Knowing we're playing finals, we probably have to keep the hype down a little bit and keep everyone under control.

"It's business as usual with an extra incentive this week, obviously being finals."

The Giants will get to do it all in their own backyard and avoid travelling in week one of the finals having finished in the top two of their conference.

"It definitely eases any anxiety about that. We were always pretty pumped about being able to play at Giants Stadium this weekend, and for that to not be taken away from us is a massive boost," Tully said.

"Now we can just go about our normal training and not have to worry about travel or anything like that, there are no extra worries on top of it."