Captain Rebecca Beeson proceed a career-best goalkicking performance as GWS scored a big early season AFLW upset, with a 12-point home win over 2025 finalists West Coast.
The Giants, who finished 17th last year with just two wins, broke open a close game at Engie Stadium, with three successive goals in four minutes in the third quarter.
West Coast kicked the last three goals of the game on Sunday but GWS hung on to register a 8.6 (54) to 6.6 (42 ) win, their first in four attempts at the venue.
Beeson kicked two opportunistic efforts and forward Tarni Evans booted her third goal of the game to set up a 17-point lead at three-quarter time.
The veteran midfielder bagged her third major early in the last quarter and Mikayla Pauga blew the margin out to 29 points, when her kick for goal took a favourable bounce.
Keeley Skepper and Isabella Shannon kicked goals to reduce the margin to 17 with just over nine minutes left and Charlotte Thomas added another with just over a minute remaining.
“I think it was a pretty complete performance by the group,” Beeson told Fox Sports and Kayo.
“I think we showed what we can do in attack and also when we tried to finish up the game, we showed some really great maturity in closing out the game.”
Beeson had never kicked more than one goal In a match in her previous 73 AFLW games.
Evans booted three goals in a game for the fourth time.
West Coast had 15 more inside 50s but left their run too late.
The first half was a tight low-scoring affair, with Evans kicking a goal from a set shot and the Eagles' Amy Franklin responding in kind.
A Georgia Garnett snap regained the lead for GWS, but Kellie-Marie Gibson prodded the ball over from a couple of metres out right on quarter time to give West Coast a three-point lead.
An Evans snap provided the only goal of the second quarter, with GWS leading by four at halftime.
The lead changed hands again when Eagles star Ella Roberts took a mark and wheeled around and kicked a booming snap, but Beeson replied almost immediately and the Giants took control.
Eagles duo Isabella Lewis and Charlotte Thomas were the leading possession getters with 27 and 24 respectively.
GWS star Alyce Parker tallied 23 touches and won a match-high ten clearances.
