FOXBORO - Gillette Stadium has been operational for six NFL seasons now, but not everyone has been in the Patriots' football palace yet.

Count Bishop Feehan High School football coach Tony Wood among those who hadn't until Thursday.

"It's my first time here," Wood said as he and his captains, Nick Schwieger and Chris Paine, strolled the FieldTurf playing surface of Gillette Stadium with the coaches and captains of the 11 other teams competing in this Saturday's MIAA Eastern Mass. Super Bowls.

"I remember the old Schaefer Stadium, but this is a lot different. It's something else," Wood said with a smile as he surveyed the sideline he'll be patrolling starting at 7:30 p.m., when the Eastern Athletic Conference-champion Shamrocks take on the Bay State League Herget Division champ, Walpole, in the Division 2 championship game.

Returning the high school championship games to the home of the Patriots for the first time since 1990, the Kraft family played host to the annual pre-Super Bowl breakfast at Gillette Thursday morning, then gave the coaches, captains and administrators the grand tour of the facility in the early afternoon. "It's impressive, that's for sure," said Paine, the Shamrocks' senior center and co-captain. "But it's going to be like any other game. Once you start playing, you're not going to notice that you're inside Gillette Stadium."

Schwieger, Feehan's talented senior running back, said his first visit to Gillette came last Sunday when he attended the Patriots' 31-28 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.

"It's very impressive," he said. "I feel very blessed to be here."

Fresh off their 23-21 triumph over Hockomock League champion Mansfield Tuesday at Acton-Boxboro Regional High, the Shamrocks are still riding high from their success in that game. But their captains made it clear Thursday that they haven't let that success go to their heads.

"We're in really good shape," Paine said. "And it also gave us another really good kick in the pants to finish it up, do what we need to do now."

"It was a great win over Mansfield," Schwieger said, "but we'd really like to get this one."

Feehan used ball-control offense, buoyed by the hard running of Schwieger and backfield mate Mynor Chacon and the outstanding play of the offensive line, to keep the ball away from Mansfield in the second half. Despite all the powerful weapons in the Hornets' arsenal, a 3-to-1 disadvantage in time of possession in the second half put the Hockomock champs into a hole from which they didn't have the time to emerge.

But, Paine said, the Shamrocks had a hint they might have been on to something when they scored before halftime, turning a 14-0 deficit into a more manageable 14-8 and beginning to get the ball-control offense untracked.

"Going into the half, we said to ourselves, 'You know what? It's our night tonight,'" Paine said. "Since the loss against Mansfield, we wanted another crack at them. We got it, we knew we could control it and that's what we did.

"We showed that we were a better team than we had showed against Mansfield the first time," he said, recalling the Hornets' 29-7 triumph earlier in the season on their home field. "We knew deep down that we didn't have the greatest of games then, and we knew that wasn't us. All the games since then, that has been us. Every game, we got better, and I think we proved that." Now, however, the Shamrocks must contend with the possibility of a letdown as they move from the out-of-the-way playoff venue in Acton to the largest stage high school sports in Massachusetts has seen in a long time.

Schwieger believes it won't be a problem for the Shamrocks, who will take a 9-2-1 record into Saturday's game against the 11-1 Rebels.

"I'm not afraid (of a letdown)," he said. "We've got a lot of seniors on this team. We've got great leaders and we know we've been improving in every game we've played. Now, we just have to get after it in practice, starting today, to get it done.

"Our motto now is, 'Let's finish,'" he added. "There was so much emotion in that game, we put our heart and soul into it, but it would be so much sweeter to come out on top at the end of it all."

MARK FARINELLA may be reached at 508-236-0315 or via e-mail at mfarinel@thesunchronicle.com