Isaac Heeney, one of the AFL's brightest young stars but a grand final debutant, went extreme with the best piece of advice he got about navigating this week. He did not simply turn off his mobile phone to find peace. He broke the thing.

While unintentional – and perhaps not ideal for Heeney's nearest and dearest – it was a sure fire way to avoid a flood of messages that threatened to prove distracting in the prelude to the most important match of his career.

Not one footballer in the Western Bulldogs' lineup named for Saturday has played in a grand final. Sydney boasts a relative hoard of 13 old-hands who have done all this before. Callum Mills, who won the league's best young player award this year and is set to return from a hamstring injury, finds himself in the minority at the Swans.

"I think the best advice I've got is just to remember we've got a game on Saturday and that's our main job," the 19 year-old said sitting alongside fellow 2016 debutant, Harry Marsh, before absorbing a grand final parade from the back of a supersized ute.

"All the leaders at our club have shared their wisdom about grand final week and you sort of put all the messages together and take what you need."

Just nearby, Tom Liberatore and Caleb Daniel said the phone shutdown tip has got a good run in the Dogs' camp too. Their skipper Robert Murphy – all too familiar with SMS deluge due to his heartbreaking injury story – advised soon after the Bullies' breathtaking last final that flight mode can be your friend.

Daniel guessed he might have received 10 times the number of text messages than usual this week – "and there's still probably a few that are coming," he quipped, though probably in truth. Teammate Luke Dahlhaus reckons after the Dogs knocked off Greater Western Sydney he got 70 messages in one night alone. Liberatore, meanwhile, has contended with one particularly enthusiastic stranger in his street in the countdown.

"A removalist, probably four doors up, stopped me for something like 10 minutes to wish me good luck one morning," the son of a gun said.

For Daniel the opening of the Dogs' locker room doors on Monday for an access-all-areas press blitz was a standout irregularity from the past seven days: "that was a bit different!". For Dahlhaus it was training on Thursday: "To have ten thousand there, it was just ridiculous. It was like a home game a couple of years ago!" he said.

But before being chauffeured through the first grand final parade the Bulldogs have ever featured in, the pair agreed their nerves had diminished steadily through the week. Dahlhaus has limited his exposure to television and radio, opting to walk his dog instead.

In the Swans' bunker, a couple of comparative grand final experts, Dan Hannebery and Dane Rampe, said they'd learnt much from their experience. According to Rampe, a member of Sydney's losing 2014 grand final team, striking the right balance between embracing the occasion and muting unhelpful noise is a delicate art.  It was Rampe who counselled Heeney this week to think about switching off (not destroying) his phone.

"The biggest thing I learnt was on the back of 2012 with the boys winning the flag," Rampe, who was not part of that team, recalled on Friday.

"I remember asking them for advice in 2014. Everyone was just saying 'enjoy the week, enjoy the build up' and I probably took that a little bit too literally, just kind of getting carried away and consumed in all this. You can forget to go about your business as usual.

"If you read articles and you start worrying about things that are out of your control – things that are being said – it drains energy levels."

Hannebery, in his third flag tilt on Saturday, has also learnt about grand final traps.

"Grand final week in 2012, I was only 21," he said.

"I probably thought about the game every night and every day in grand final week that year; just saw myself playing the way I wanted to play.

"As much as I think that's important, probably a day or two out, it's pretty unhealthy doing that every day.

"You can get caught up in trying to reply to every message or ringing people back or reading every article. What you do sort of get to understand is that you don't need to necessarily read everything or reply to everything or even take it all in."