Kangaroos plan to bring AFLW finals heat

North Melbourne can argue they know better than any other top-eight team what works and what does not ahead of the AFLW finals.

The Kangaroos are the only team to play all of the other seven finalists this season and they split their results, with three wins, three losses and a draw.

Heading into Saturday night's elimination final against free-scoring Geelong, they are well aware of what will happen if they do not bring the right sort of pressure.

A fortnight ago, the Kangaroos were outstanding against Collingwood and beat them by 32 points.

But on Sunday, with a top-four spot beckoning, they were sluggish out of the blocks against Richmond and had to scramble for a draw.

That meant instead of finishing fourth and snaring a double chance, they dropped to eighth and face a sudden-death trip to GMHBA Stadium.

Defender Nicole Bresnehan said what separated the Collingwood and Richmond games was the pressure the Kangaroos brought early.

"That's something we want to be known for in our game, that pressure," Bresnehan said.

"Finals footy is about that contest - who's going to win that contest, first-up?

"Coming into this first final, we've reviewed the Richmond game and taken away some growths.

"We know what it takes to play top-four footy ... just making sure we're building that belief still, because we have come up against some really good sides and played some really good footy."

Bringing early heat will be particularly important against Geelong, who have transformed themselves this season into a goalkicking machine.

Last weekend the Cats kicked 15.12 against hapless Sydney - the second-highest score in AFLW history.

It is light years removed from Geelong's round-one shocker against Richmond - arguably the worst match of the season - when the Cats could only manage two goals to one despite perfect conditions.

"I know people are reporting it as a switch, or 'you've changed something in your game plan' - it's really not the case," Cats captain Meg McDonald said.

"We had a new coach in season six, we tried to limit scores against and then we wanted to take the next step going into season seven.

"To expect that to happen magically in round one was probably a bit naive, but the great reward of season seven for us is we've built week-on-week on our game plan."

Along with stopping Geelong's rampant scoring, another key for North will be whether Jasmine Garner can return to top form.

Garner was named the AFL Coaches Association player of the season this week, only a couple of days after Richmond's Meg Macdonald tagged her out of the game.

It was an outstanding job that Geelong's Dan Lowther and every other AFLW coach would have noted with interest.

"We can probably start to tweak things a little bit earlier, whether we pop Jas up forward," Bresnehan said.

"It was a really important game. We were probably a little bit structurally out with Kim Rennie out, (Emma) Kearney out.

"She's had a fantastic season, she's going to get tagged, and she still had an impact for us."