Ahead of Saturday's clash with Hawthorn, the Giants have won three straight games and are just one win outside the eight with Adam Kingsley's troops embracing the grind of learning a new game plan and building strongly into the back half of the season.
Kelly, who bombed a 65m goal to down Melbourne in Alice Springs last weekend, says the team's progress isn't ahead of his own expectations, but added he won't be worrying about finals until they are there.
"At the start of the year I thought our ceiling could be anything," he said.
"I was really confident in the system we were bringing in, the coaching group and what they wanted to implement … we still feel like we're building, like there's a lot a lot of pieces coming together.
"It is exciting, no doubt, three in a row and playing some good football, having those things come together is an exciting time for the group.
"(But) we probably haven't spent too much time looking at the ladder … we thought there were some wins around the corner, so we're not focusing too much on finals, on results, we've just got to keep coming back to what we want to do and how we want to play footy."
They add Lachie Whitfield to the side that upset the Demons and are nearing full health with Brent Daniels (hamstring) close to a return.
The Hawks enter off consecutive 67 and 60-point thumpings and lose veteran forward Luke Breust to a throat injury, but do regain running defender Jarman Impey and forward Tyler Brockman.
They're 0-5 in interstate trips this season - not including their makeshift home of Tasmania - and coach Sam Mitchell acknowledged it was a learning curve his young side needed to begin addressing.
"We've been looking at our interstate stuff, and we've actually started games poorly," he said.
"Then we've actually been able to run games back not too bad, that's been a bit of a pattern early in the year with all of our third quarters, and then now it's more been first half.
"That's part of our preparation and part of our learning ... we had three players in our back six who had played less than 20 games, two of them less than 10.
"Those guys, they haven't travelled very much … all those things are challenges you learn over time and we want to make them learn them as quickly as possible so that we can be more consistent wherever we play."
