Her Giants take on the Vixens in Melbourne on Saturday night with a place in next week's inaugural Super Netball grand final against Sunshine Coast up for grabs.

It'll be Fitzgerald's 24th finals appearance as a coach, and she's shooting for an astonishing eighth grand final in the past 20 years, across this competition and its previous two incarnations.

The Giants mentor has coached more games than the combined total of the other three who led their teams to the top four this season – Melbourne's Simone McKinnis, Sunshine Coast's Maria Taurua and the Magpies' Kristy Keppich-Birrell.

Yet Fitzgerald still boasts the same passion she had for the game more than 30 years ago when she came through the ranks at the Ku-ring-gai Netball Association in Sydney's north.

It's a passion that has allowed her to build a team that didn't even have a name a year ago into one that is only two games away from lifting the Super Netball trophy.

"I just love it, I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't doing this. I thoroughly enjoy every minute of what I do," Fitzgerald said.

"It was less than 12 months ago that we didn't have a name or a colour, all they had was me, we had no support staff. We didn't know then if we were going to be Giants, we didn't know what colour we'd be, we didn't have players, you don't often get that opportunity to build something from scratch.

"I really like young people, I enjoy the fact that I get to work and be with them every day, I really enjoy watching them grow and develop, not just as netballers, but as people.

"I'm also very big on the fact that if you don't have a team that gets on well and has a good culture, you can't win. When we put this team together, we were careful that we picked players that would fit into the type of culture that we wanted to have and the type of club we wanted to run," she said.

"If you don't get it right this year, then you don't have a legacy to follow. I thought the first year, the culture of the club was terribly important."

That culture Fitzgerald built led to 10 wins and a third-placed finish, despite captain Kim Green going down in round five with a season-ending knee injury.

But Fitzgerald was careful in assembling her team, after agreeing to become the club's inaugural coach following three years at the helm of Waikato-Bay of Plenty Magic in New Zealand.

The other two expansion clubs in Sunshine Coast and the Magpies embarked on a recruitment drive to sign a swag of the world's best players.

Of the 10 original players at the Giants, there were two English imports in Jo Harten and Serena Guthrie, and the rest were NSW juniors.

When Kristiana Manu'a went down in pre-season with a knee injury, Fitzgerald turned to Bec Bulley – not a NSW junior, but a former Diamond who had played some of her best netball last decade at the cross-town Swifts.

"The thing I am most happy about this team is other than the two Poms, they're all NSW juniors," Fitzgerald said.

"When we put it together we had eight NSW juniors and four NSW training partners, and that's one of the things I really cherish, the fact it's a home-grown team.

"If you've got home-grown players, they're not looking for an opportunity to go home – they are home. And it means a little bit more to play in your home state.

"There's always a couple of players you might want and you miss out on but by the time they came together, I was happy with what I had.

"I had a wonderful time in New Zealand, I loved the team that I coached and I met lifelong friends over there. I'm very close to my family so coming home to my family was a lure, but also how often in your career do you get to build something from the ground up."

Recruitment was the easy part for Fitzgerald. Every player on the list jumped at the opportunity to play for the super coach, and the entire squad speaks of Fitzgerald like she's a second mother.

She's a mentor, a friend and a guardian to her flock, yet that only tells part of the Fitzgerald story.

"I can coach netball too," she says with a twinkle in her eye.

Should she steer this fledgling team to the Super Netball premiership, it might well prove her proudest moment.