Nirranda ready for WDFNL finals challenge and can keep improving, says gun midcourter Joanna Couch

The Blues jet - who is among the favourites to take out the Warrnambool and District league best and fairest - told The Standard the team enjoyed the time to reflect and celebrate a strong home-and-away season after going through undefeated.

"It was good to regroup and really celebrate finishing on top as a playing group," she said.

"Lisa (Arundell) likes to bring us down to Earth and absorb it all because it doesn't happen very often."

Couch - a teacher at Terang College - said the training standards through the week off were strong, giving the Blues a chance to fine tune areas of their game ahead of the finals series.

"Lisa turned up training knowing we had the Saturday off, so we trained Tuesday and Thursday and had a practice match against A Reserve so we had match fitness," she said.

"We did have a week off but we kept up the intensity during the week."

Fully aware the Blues will enter finals as raging premiership favourites after finishing on top by two games, Couch said it was vital the group stayed grounded over the next few weeks.

"Throughout the season we've taken each week as it comes so the hype of finals is different but we'll try to stay in tune rather than put pressure on ourselves," she said.

"We'll focus on this weekend against Merrivale and get excited about finals and enjoy the experience.

"The last time we met they were missing a few and the first time we did we were too, it's going to be a great match considering both are full strength.

"We watched them on the weekend and it was a good chance to watch them and Panmure - they're a very skilful team so we'll try and play our game and make sure we're in control."

Couch believes the group is now primed to peak at the right time with the squad finally now at full strength.

"Lisa made a really good point to us a few weeks ago - we knew other teams would improve out of sight but because we're at full strength with Lisa (Anders) and Cloe (Marr) we've improved even more," she said.

"We don't focus on the (winning) margins as such, we have little goals to focus on as a team and individually so I think that's slowly improved everyone as an individual.

"It's come at a great time that everyone is at 100 per cent fitness, so it's a good time to have nine full strength players for the finals series which is exciting."