With the Shute Shield season half over, Manly coach Phil Blake has stared into his crystal ball and worked out what he believes to be the finals cut-off figure.

"Sixty-two to 65 points should get you in," predicts the Marlins coach.

The good news for Manly is they are already two-thirds of the way there.

Sitting on 43 points after 11 rounds – one off second-placed Eastwood and seven shy of leaders Souths - Blake's men are well placed to enter the finals in a lofty position.

"I think we're in a really good position to finish in the top two," Blake declared.

"If we do that it will be a really good achievement and a step up from last year.

"And, if we make it that far, we're one step away from the big dance (grand final) and that's where we all want to be at the end of the year."

Asked to rate the season to date, Blake responded: "Very good.

"And with the players I know we are getting back over the next three to four weeks, the club's in a very strong position."

"We're in a lot better position at this stage than we were this time last year, even though we led the competition 12 months ago.

"There's some exciting times coming up."

Manly limped rather than sprinted into the play-offs last year and were summarily dismissed by Eastwood in week one.

The harsh lessons of that campaign have been heeded.

"The things we put in place last year will hold us in even better stead this year," Blake said.

"We've got a few players from the next level filtering back to the club or who have joined the club because we realised long ago you can't play part-time footballers against full-time footballers.

"We purposely went out to get some more full-time footballers.

"We figured that with the progression with the part-time footballers in conjunction with the fulltime footballers, we're in a good position to launch into the back-end of the season."

Manly travel to Granville on Saturday to take on winless Parramatta.