The Bloods, who face Huntly in Sunday’s elimination final at White Hills, are hoping to cap their return to post-season action with a victory.

First-year coach Sue Borserio is urging her players to embrace the challenge and make the most of the opportunity as reward for their eight wins and one draw during the season.

“It’s very exciting for the Elmore club to have four netball teams into the finals, lots of planning and preparation from coaches and players alike,” she said.

“We are definitely the under-dogs going into the (A-grade) match, but anything can happen in finals and it’s just a matter of who is the best on the day.

“We have had a very interrupted second half of the season with injuries, etcetera, but it has given some younger players a chance to gain some valuable experience up in A-grade and it will be great to have a squad of 12 players able to take the court if needed on Sunday.”

Borserio said she was certain her players would give a good account of themselves and would take confidence from an earlier season two goal win against the Hawks.

Huntly too has been rocked by injuries in the second half of the season, with defenders Alex Waterman and Montana Kekich and goal shooter Laura Philbrick all succumbing to season-ending issues.

Despite reaching the finals the last two seasons – after missing in 2014 and ’15 – the Hawks have gone 0-3 in that time.

Second-year coach Emily Eliades was expecting Elmore to be ‘pumped up’ for their first finals appearance since 2012.

“It’s fantastic to see someone new up in finals,” she said.

“From our perspective, after last year we set ourselves a goal at the start of the season of establishing a finals winning culture and winning a finals game.

“I think with what we have had to deal with week-in, week-out with injuries, and to be close to finishing third, I reckon the girls will be pretty hungry for it.”

Jenna Baker has filled the breach left by Philbrick at goal shooter and has been a steady and accurate presence in the circle for the Hawks in the run to finals.

Meanwhile, Mount Pleasant enters its qualifying final at Heathcote on Saturday without a win this season against rival Colbinabbin.

But Blues coach Belinda Pinner was confident her side took plenty of lessons out of a 65-26 loss to the Grasshoppers in round 14.

Their finals campaign suffered a horrible blow in a loss last week to White Hills, with the Blues losing class defender Kate McCann with a dislocated knee cap.

On the plus side the Blues hope to regain Chantal Moore, who has played sparingly in the last few weeks in her comeback from injury.

Pinner was glad to have secured the double chance and said her side welcomed the opportunity to prove itself against the league’s top two sides.

“I do think finals are a different ball-game and we want to prove we are capable of going further into finals than we did last year,” she said.

“Obviously Colbo have a lot more finals experience than us, but we are going to give it a red-hot crack.

“I’ve said this all year, if we could put four 15-minute quarters together each week, it would be great; when we do put a quarter together with Colbo and White Hills we are competitive.

“The task is getting four of those  quarters together on one day.”

Colbinabbin has its own issues with personnel, with Georgia Rodger, who is running a marathon in California, to miss and coach Liz Cobbledick battling a calf injury.

But the Grasshoppers have regained premiership star Jess Geary, who has been quickly building form and confidence in A-reserve after a delayed start to the season.

Cobbledick was expecting a fierce contest from the Blues, who gave the reigning premiers a real fright in last year’s preliminary final,

The 2016 league best and fairest said she was rapt with her team’s response to its sole loss against White Hills in round 16 in wins against Lockington-Bamawm United and  North Bendigo.

“We definitely wanted to go away and re-focus and put things in place after White Hills; we knew what we needed to work on,” she said.

“We’ll keep building on that and hopefully get to meet White Hills again in a few weeks.

“We’re expecting a tough game from Mounts – finals are always a different story.”