GWS have confirmed they have reached "preliminary" stages in their pursuit of Essendon pair Dylan Shiel and Jake Stringer.
The Giants have already worked through a busy few days of player movement, having seen Harry Perryman (Collingwood), Isaac Cumming (Adelaide) and Nick Haynes (Carlton) depart, while James Peatling is seeking a move to the Crows.
The situation has left the Giants to explore options elsewhere for the trade period, with Shiel and Stringer emerging as potential targets despite being contracted at the Bombers.
GWS list manager Adrian Caruso will lead the club's plans to potentially pry both players out of Tullamarine as they weigh up their list options.
"We've got a list of guys that we're doing a little bit of preliminary work on, Jake being one of those," Caruso said.
"Some of those will be players that we might have to look to do a bit sooner during the trade period, and some might be delisted free agents.
"At the moment, everything we're doing with all those guys is very preliminary. It wasn't until late last week that we found out what Picks we have and that obviously James was leaving as well.
"So we're just really starting to get the ball rolling with all that stuff now in a very preliminary sense.
"[Shiel] will be one, there's a heap of guys. It's a range of positions and age, seeing what's available, seeing who might be attainable.
"It's got to make sense financially for us, in a pick sense and also from a list spots point of view.
"The reason that we haven't done a lot of this work sooner was because we were hopeful that some of these guys who have left us would have stayed. So now that we know they're gone, now the trade period is starting, we can start having those discussions, bearing in mind that Jake and Dylan are both contracted."
GWS are hopeful utility Conor Stone will remain in New South Wales as he assesses his options, with Essendon a club interested.
The young Victorian could be part of a deal that sees either or both Shiel and Stringer head north to the Harbour City, however the Giants do have an offer on the table for Stone.
Caruso is also confident contracted pair Wade Derksen and Xavier O'Halloran will remain in Giants colours for 2025 following recent interest from Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs respectively.
