Essendon Coach John Worsfold says his team is looking forward to the challenge of taking on one of the best sides in the competition this weekend.

The Bombers will be looking to return to the winners list when they travel to Sydney to play the Giants on Saturday.

Brent Stanton, Ben Howlett and Martin Gleeson return, while Matt Dea, James Kelly (groin) and Darcy Parish (calf) miss out.

The Giants are coming off an impressive win in Perth against West Coast and occupy second spot on the ladder.

“The Giants are obviously a very highly rated team after a great year last year and having built on that,” Worsfold said.

“They do have great depth, we saw that last week.

“Regardless of availability of players they represent a huge challenge for us, but it’s one we need to have.

“We need to find out where we’re at and take up that challenge.”

Howlett returns for the Dons after picking up 35 possessions in the VFL last week, while Worsfold said Stanton has been in good form throughout his last three matches at state level.

“’Stants’ has been playing wing and half back and a little bit at half forward earlier in the year in the seniors,” Worsfold said.

“He’s back in really good form, using the ball really well off half back.

“It’s most likely we’ll see him play a fair bit back there and use his experience and his ball use to help set up our attacking moves.”

Gleeson spent time opposed to Richmond’s 198cm key forward and ruckman Mabior Chol last week and competed strongly in the air, beating or nullifying his taller opponent on several occasions.

“We’ve definitely been looking for Marty to keep building all parts of his game but his speed off half back and his intercept marking, which has been improving all the time, are the attributes we’re looking to see back in the line-up,” Worsfold said.

Essendon sits in 11th position on the ladder, but just one win out of the top four.

Worsfold said the Bombers took some confidence out of last week’s match knowing they were below their best, but the game was still in the balance deep into the last quarter.

“We didn’t play as well as we have been previously and we’ve sifted through and tried to work out the reasons for that,” Worsfold said.

“Ultimately we took is right up to Richmond even though we were just off and Richmond are in pretty good form.

“Even though they’d lost some pretty close games, they were against very good teams. 

“We want to get back to playing the sort of footy we’ve shown we can play and that (the game against Richmond) was more an aberration than our true form.”