Sydney coach John Longmire is trying to embrace the unknown rather than decry it.

Longmire has elected to wait until after his side meets Greater Western Sydney in the AFL pre-season cup on Saturday before he passes judgment on the worthiness of the underdeveloped Giants to take part in a senior fixture a year early.

Port Adelaide football operations manager Peter Rohde has already said he would have preferred for his side to avoid the Giants/Gold Coast double, but Longmire gave his new crosstown rivals the benefit of the doubt, pointing to the likelihood of senior reinforcements.

"It's hard to gauge because we haven't seen them play," said Longmire.

"I spoke to someone who watched them play on the weekend and he said 'yeah they're young but they're also getting some more mature bodies to play for them this week'.

"So it's a bit hard to judge until we've actually gone out and played them - I'll reserve judgment on that.

"I think it's a good opportunity for our blokes to finally play against some opposition, they're sick of playing themselves at scratch matches in training, they just want to get into some genuine opposition."

Not since the Power arrived in 1997 and Fremantle two years before has so little been known about the readiness of two teams.

"It is a challenge for us, we haven't seen too much of these two teams play so it is a unique challenge for us," said Longmire.

"But we know they've got some exciting young talent on both teams, so it's a bit of the unknown what we come up against regarding the opposition.

"Regardless of who we play against we've got to make sure we go about the business, do what we do and achieve what we want to achieve out of it, which is making sure we continue to play the type of footy we want to play.

"That's our main focus getting game time into our senior players over the four weeks prior to round one."

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