The Saints sealed their eighth-straight Hampden league grand final appearance after holding on against a gallant North Warrnambool Eagles 8.12 (60) to 8.4 (52) in Saturday's second semi-final.

A relieved McLaren now has two weeks to prepare his side.

"You come here on a day like today to get a job done and we get the job done," McLaren said of the game at Friendly Societies' Park.

"In a way a pleasing part is there's a lot of areas we could tidy up.

"I'm clearly rapt we won and are in a grand final but from a coaching point of view I'm like, geez we might have dodged a bit of a bullet there late."

The Saints led at every change and were 17 points in front at three-quarter-time.

In the final quarter the Eagles came home with a wet sail, winning the quarter 18 to nine and falling eight points short of an upset.

"I thought our first half was quite strong," McLaren said.

"We lost a bit of momentum, really struggled to get any territory in the second-half. We've got a little bit of work to do if we play them again."

McLaren said some of his side's mistakes were "a bit uncharacteristic" but that was to be expected when you had nine players appearing in their first Hampden league final.

He said the main areas the Saints needed to improve surrounded decision-making with the ball and aspects of defence.

Jack O'Sullivan was a standout for the victors and limited the impact of Eagles captain Adam Wines while star Eagle Nathan Vardy was dominant playing in the ruck and was his side's most influential player.

The competition's leading goal-kicker, Sam Dobson, slotted four for Koroit.

North Warrnambool Eagles coach Adam Dowie said he was disappointed with the result but not his players' efforts and their second half.

"When things weren't really going our way our guys just hung in there," he said.

"We were pretty confident that our best footy could match it with anyone.

"I reckon we showed that today.

"We've still got a couple of guys that are going to come into contention next week."

One of those players to return is gun midfielder Billie Smedts who was a late omission from the Eagles' side due to soreness. Dowie was adamant Smedts would be fit for the preliminary final.

Both sides looked to have gotten through the match unscathed while Dowie was pleased to see forwards Dylan Parish and Jack Burke make comebacks in the reserves.

The former kicked one goal while the latter had two.

Following the final siren, McLaren stressed that his players needed to savour their achievement in the short-term before turning focus towards the grand final.

"The club's experienced enough to know getting in it is fantastic but we want to win it," he said.

"The players should take a minute to enjoy it and then switch into recovery, get to work and zone into an opponent this time next week."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: