Round 1 Women’s Preview v East Perth

The WAFL Women’s season for Swan Districts in 2025 gets underway this Saturday afternoon in a Round 1 match up with East Perth at Leederville’s Sullivan Logistics Stadium.

Swan Districts will feature in the very first game of the 2025 WAFL Women’s season as well in that clash with the Royals which gets underway right in the middle of the afternoon heat on Saturday at 2.05pm.

That will be the precursor to the Rogers Cup contest also with Swan Districts playing East Perth at the Leederville venue which begins at 4pm.

Coming into the 2025 season and Swan Districts is looking to build off a finals appearance last year in the WAFL Women’s competition once again.

Swans started last season losing five of the opening nine games, but then finished the home and away campaign strongly winning four of the last five matches to end up finishing in fourth position with an 8-6 record.

That set up a first semi-final match up with West Perth and while it didn’t go the way Swan Districts were hoping, there was a lot to build upon moving forward from that season.

There’s a new coach on board once again as well for the black-and-whites with Jason Burton taking over the helm for the first time but a lot of the playing group has remained stable with some exciting young talent coming through.

The continued emergence of reigning fairest and best winner Carys D’Addario is going to be one of the more exciting things to watch this season even if she has lost her midfield running mate Lily Paterson who is now in the AFLW with Port Adelaide.

Swan Districts has also done a strong job retaining a lot of the group of core players including co-captains Eliza Gelmi and Demi Liddle.

Other key players returning include Kayley King, Taylah Edwards, Adi Griffith, Emma Nanut, Naomi Baker, Indi West, Hope Ugle-Hayward, Lauren Quaife, Emma Humphries, Sienna Pollard, Isabella Edgley, Meg Carron and Emily McGuire.

There’s exciting young talent coming through too who will look to continue to emerge led by D’Addario but including Tamzyn Beros, Summer Ajduk, Ava Stewart, Sienna Gerardi and Courtney Zappara.

Swans have also welcomed back Jaime Henry after she spent the 2024 season in the VFLW at the Western Bulldogs while former Fremantle Dockers AFLW star Ashley Sharp also returns now as a mother of two.

All the signs are there for Swan Districts to have a strong 2025 season but getting off to a good start will be crucial against an East Perth team looking to also continue improving after notching two wins in 2024.

The two teams have played four times now over the last two seasons with Swan Districts winning all four encounters by an average of 65.3 points including a 101-point thumping in Round 13 last year which also took place at Sullivan Logistics Stadium.

The Swan Districts Rogers Cup team will then look to make a winning start to their 2025 season when they play East Perth to close the afternoon at Leederville.

Swans also finished fourth last Rogers Cup season with an 8-6 record before losing to Subiaco in the first semi-final.

Last year when Swan Districts took on East Perth in the Rogers Cup, the black-and-whites won both encounters by nine and 85 points respectively with them now looking to continue on with that to start the 2025 season in winning fashion.