Sunday's maiden grand final appearance for the Wanderers comes in just their sixth season but has been a long time in the planning.

The journey started with the formation of the Eastern Wanderers, a Wagga team that made the decision to explore a future in the Griffith competition in 2014.

Later that year, it joined forces with Football Wagga and took their licence in Sydney's NPL competition and the Wagga City Wanderers were born.

"We had 12 months in Griffith and at that point in time we wanted to spend a couple of years in Griffith because at that time, Griffith had a really strong competition and Wagga's comp wasn't in the best of shape," Curran explained.

"We were looking at doing that for a few years and then try to get a licence in Sydney. But then Football Wagga ended up getting the licence and it all happened a lot quicker than what we originally anticipated.

"Football Wagga approached us and asked us if we wanted to get involved with it. They said we've got the licence, do you guys want to basically run it.

"We decided that was the best thing for football in Wagga and the region, rather than having two organisations going for it and trying to achieve the one thing, was to join as one."

Eastern Wanderers inaugural coach Andrew Douglas and key figure, Curran, worked with Football Wagga's Erwin Budde and Dean Pinney, through Loy, to form Wagga City Wanderers in the Sydney-based state league in 2015.

Curran said where the Wanderers are now, about to embark on the club's first senior grand final, was what they envisaged for the club all those years ago.

"It was, to be honest. We wanted something that was going to provide a clear pathway for the kids coming forward," he said.

"When I was a young kid growing up, we didn't have this kind of pathway or opportunity for football or to play elite football. It was basically you play your Wagga rep, go play country NSW and that's basically about it. Not really anyway, at that point in time.

"Now there's a pathway from little kids right the way through to seniors, and that's men and women as well. It's great to see. It's fantastic."

Loy revealed Football Wagga's original vision was a five-year plan, starting in 2015, that would see the Wanderers develop into a club with a full compliment of teams.

"It's exciting to see where we've come to from where we started," Loy said.

"We had a five year plan and talking with Erwin (Budde), who was president of Football Wagga at the time when we got started, how exciting it is that we actually executed that plan to a T.

"If you look back to where we started at, we were playing in the comp in Sydney and that was under Football NSW banner and at the time we always wanted and always thought we would end up with a full compliment of teams playing. At the start we always envisaged it would be in Sydney but things change and it's worked out better for us.

"Logistically, it's made it more viable for us from a cost point of view and also a resource point of view to manage that in that competition."

Current Wanderers president Brendan Flanagan has been in charge for four seasons and oversaw the switch from state league in Sydney to the Canberra-based Capital Football.

The move allowed the Wanderers to grow from a two-team club in Sydney into a prosperous club with a full compliment of mens, women's and junior sides, in both boys and girls, in Canberra.

Flanagan says the move to Canberra was a game changer.

"From the year I came in, we were struggling, we had half a dozen to eight first grade players and we were scratching," Flanagan said.

"We had no junior program either and that was a big key event for us. Introducing that. We tried for a long time to get into Capital Football and couldn't get in. We had our path blocked by a few rival clubs, perhaps.

"We knew as soon as we got that opportunity for our kids that things would just take off and go up and up and up, and they have. It's just a great opportunity for kids in the area, in the region, to play at a higher level. I know there is plenty of kids in the region that would have killed for the opportunity if they had of been given it when they were young.

"That's been very satisfying. Having said that, even though we knew we were going to get there eventually, we never would have thought we would have both our senior teams make finals in the second year.

"We've had 20s win last year, 18s won in the juniors last year as well, and in our women's, they've been strong from the get go. All our female junior teams have made finals this year and last year so we're well on track."

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