Entering the competition for the first time and getting a new franchise up and running has meant a lot of hard work by people around the club but Strickland said the players and the board had exceeded their expectations in making this year’s grand final.

‘‘Clearly it’s exciting and beyond what we imagined and we’re thrilled to bits,’’ she said.

‘‘We’ve had to get a lot of things in place this year because 12 months ago we didn’t have colours or a brand, we had some players but not a team and nowhere to do our preseason training.

‘‘So we’ve had to pull off a fair few things over the past 12 months and it took a little while to settle on Mitch Hills as a coach but that was a great decision that we made and we couldn’t be happier.’’

Strickland said a committed board had worked hard to achieve success and the level of support that the club had been able to build from individuals and families had made a huge difference.

‘‘I think we’ve done really well considering it’s only 12 months down the track and we’ve got a lot of people who are excited and happy to be involved with us and that is a really good platform for us to move on into 2015 when we won’t have to do a lot of the set-up jobs we had to do this year and late in 2013,’’ she said.

‘‘I think we have exceeded our expectations in terms of the level of support that we’ve received across the community and particularly in our football zone.

‘‘We knew it was going to be a tough year and in some respects it has been but we’re all pretty excited to get into the grand final and positioned ourselves as we have because we didn’t have any volunteers when we started off and we’ve got plenty of support around us come grand final day.’’

The Western Storm board and its playing group share a sense of pride in what they have been able to achieve when many doubters and detractors had predicted failure before the season started.

‘‘I think the players and the board are all fairly proud that we’ve managed to do what a lot of people thought was going to be a pretty hard task, or impossible task even, but we’ve pulled it off in a pretty good fashion.

‘‘I think that winning a premiership will be the icing on the cake.

‘‘But no matter what the outcome is on Saturday, we are still going to feel pretty proud of what we’ve achieved this year – but everyone is focused on game day on Saturday and wanting to get over the line there.

‘‘It would be a pretty rare event for a club in its first year of operation to win a grand final.’’