Hodyl says time is right to move on as President

Peter Hodyl did all he could to become a premiership President at Swan Districts having tasted that glory as a player himself, but ultimately it’s the growth of the club as a whole under his tenure he’s most proud of as he rides off into the sunset.

Initially, Hodyl joined the board and put his hand up to be President at Swan Districts with the club in need of some direction to help get out of a difficult situation.

But they say you judge someone on if they leave a place in a better position than when they started, and if that’s the measurement of the presidency of Hodyl then it can’t be judged as anything but a gigantic success.

The club is now in a strong position off the field and could very well be the most viable club as a whole in the WAFL, while what they have become as a community power through the Social Impact Program has to be admired.

Winning and losing on the football field still matters, but the Swan Districts Football Club has become about so much more than that throughout the metropolitan area, still in the north of the state and the Pilbara, and the rest of the club’s zone.

Now with Hodyl making the decision to step down from the club’s Board and President a year after also retiring from work, he wanted to thank all the support he’s received along the journey before getting to anything else.

“I do want to make a really strong point about the support that I’ve had throughout my tenure from the three CEOs that we’ve had during that time, Tom Bottrell, Jeff Dennis in particular, and now Jarrad Wright,” Hodyl said.

“All of our board members, our staff members have made the football club an incredible place. A WAFL club is not a nine to five job and all our staff, whether it’s our Finance Manager who comes down filling up kegs of beer and carrying cartons over to the Swan Bar on a Saturday, everyone just pitches in.

“If it’s a Sunday, everyone’s always there and it’s not a nine to five job and our mob along with our volunteers that are especially exceptional, but our staff have been amazing.

“I do thank them dearly for all the support they’ve given the club as well.”

Still no shortage of success

While Swan Districts didn’t quite win that WAFL League men’s premiership in Hodyl’s time, there was plenty more success along his journey which made him proud to oversee.

And just in 2026, the WAFLW team were the dominant team all season and made a second straight Grand Final, the Rogers Cup won the premiership as did the men’s Reserves at Optus Stadium, and then the All-Abilities Team played off in a Grand Final too.

“Four out of the six teams representing Swans played off in a Grand Final too with the Rogers Cup and Reserves both winning the flag,” Hodyl said.

“Our WAFLW team played off in their second consecutive grand final only to just fall short by four points and our All-Abilities team played in their first grand final also losing narrowly. Not a bad effort!”

Making the final decision

As someone who played 80 games for Swan Districts himself including in the 1990 premiership triumph and who has now been so heavily involved on the Board and as President, not having an official role with the club might take some getting used to for Hodyl.

At the same time, he feels the time is right both for the Club to be under some new leadership and vision, and also for himself and his family so they don’t have so much of their life based around a football season.

“Well, it wasn’t that hard and it’s a case of if you keep doing the same thing over and over again even if everything’s going OK, that nothing will change, and I felt that a different optic from somebody else may be all that we need to take that next step into our senior football men’s program to get some success,” Hodyl said.

“But also, when I first got on the board, it was never part of my plan. It was the sort of right place at right time, I suppose, when we discovered how precarious our footy club was and I thought I had to try and stay just to see if we can get ourselves to break even to start with.

“Then it just sort of kept going from there and then all of a sudden it was 13, 14 years later and here we are. I’ve just retired last year from work as well so I do plan on doing a fair bit of travel, and like everything that I do, you’re either all in or you’re not. You can’t just do it half-hearted, and it’s not just a footy club.

“It was the whole WAFL scenario as well and I think I’ve been a pretty good advocate for the WAFL. I fought hard and tried to tried to keep people accountable as best you can so it was not a hard decision to step down, and I’ll still be certainly involved and around the club.

“It’s not something that you just walk away and disappear into the sunset, but I think it’s the right decision and to some new people in there.

“We’ve got some good younger people on the board now as well and we probably need to try and get another couple more. So, I think it’s probably time.”

Proud of the club’s position

Going back to when Hodyl was first elected to the Board in 2012 and then became President in 2014, that was a period where Swan Districts were just trying to get back on their feet.

Thriving wasn’t so much a focus back then, it was just about trying to get back on even footing on a financial sustainability point of view. Once that happened, a focus on trying to be successful on the football field could become a real goal once more.

But now when Hodyl is able to take a step back and reflect on where the club was in a challenging off-field position back to 2012 and trying to build back up again on the field after the 2010 premiership, he couldn’t be prouder to see where everything sits now.

“It was always the goal and even from year one, we would set our budgets, and made sure they were always very, very conservative, and we had to make profits,” Hodyl said.

“We just had to and it was in the early years it really was at the expense of our on-field men’s football success because we just couldn’t compete with other clubs.

“We just couldn’t do it so we tightened our belts right up and we had to pay the price on the field, but it certainly saved the club and all that financial recovery really is not any credit to me.

“It’s the strong finance directors that we’ve had over the years and our strong finance committees who have been the ones that drive all that.

“So being president, I found was actually quite easy because you surround yourself with really good people, and the job’s not that hard.

“I’ve been fortunate to have some exceptional people that love the footy club and have contributed over that journey.”

Social impact

As much as how all the male and female Swan Districts teams perform on the field is still important, the even more significant role that the club is now playing in the community comes through what the social impact programs are doing.

That takes place right throughout the state and it’s a great source of pride for Hodyl with the significant impact Swans are having and how many people they are able to provide support to.

“Our Social Impact program was already established when I came on board, but primarily in our Pilbara zone, but we’ve now expanded that significantly into the metro zone and things like that,” Hodyl said.

“I’d always get asked how to make a WAFL club successful and sustainable, and yeah we certainly are the preeminent state football league so the best players in the state that don’t get to the AFL play here so that’s the football side of things, but that doesn’t sustain the club.

“That’s a line item, an expense item, and a significant expense item every year so the sustainability of our football club has got to be about diversification and using the tools that we’ve got, which is football and our connections within the community.

“It’s also our connections within government and local government, all that sort of stuff and businesses to expand that community outreach and therefore become that centre of our community.

Didn’t quite get premiership dream

While the premiership dream that Hodyl was chasing never quite eventuated, Swan Districts did get close back in 2024 when hosting a preliminary final, and then circumstances all pulled against them to not be able to get close to their best team on the park the past two years.

Hodyl does like the position the club’s in moving forward and doesn’t feel that success is far away and part of him wanting to step away was to allow a new President to come in with potentially a new vision.

“One of the drivers for me stepping away was to get a fresh look at things and somebody else might have an idea that can help us get to that ultimate success,” Hodyl said.

“We did our football specific strategic plan in 2021 I think it was, it was a five-year plan, and we basically just reverse-engineered everything to say that instead of spending all your money on what you think you can afford right now, think about what the outcome is.

“A premiership will mean you’ve got to have good quality strength and conditioning, good quality facilities, good quality players, good quality coaches and everything else. You can’t just go and build all them in one year.

“You’ve got to try and build up so you knock over those blocks that I believe we have and we certainly reached to push for a premiership a couple of years ago.

“Then in the next two years, unfortunately, probably our strength and conditioning is the one that cost us a bit, and that’s not laying the blame anywhere, but we just suffered a whole bunch of injuries.

“When you can’t put your best four or five players on the field every week, it becomes a tough ask and it’s a credit to our whole men’s playing list, and our women’s as well, that they’ve all bought in and want to be part of where we’re going.

“That’s a testament to see how our Reserves won their grand final this year with the considerable amount of players which were dragged up to fill holes in the League throughout the year as well. They continued on and there was quite a number of players that when we did get players back, they actually didn’t get a game.

“They had to go and play in the country on a permit for a couple of games, but then come straight back and a couple of them played in our grand final. They could have quite easily just moved on, but they wanted to be part of it and I think that’s a good thing.”

Ultimately premierships are hard to win

The reality is, every year there’s 10 clubs going into every season with the ambition of winning a WAFL premiership and they are mighty hard to win, and you need an almighty amount to go right for that happen.

But what Hodyl can be comfortable with is that Swan Districts did put everything in place to give themselves the best chance of success in recent years.

“Premierships are hard to win and the whole idea is try and finish in the top three as often as you can, and if you achieve that, then the law of averages would say maybe every three or four goes, you should actually win a flag,” Hodyl said.

“I’m just disappointed we didn’t give ourselves more of a chance with a couple of grand final appearances which might have been better, but then if you if you lost them, I think I’d have a heart attack.”

Travelling is now the priority

Now that Hodyl no longer has any work, Board or Presidency commitments, doing plenty of travel is now what’s taking up a lot of his planning both by jumping on a plane to Europe but also testing out his new caravan closer to home.

“We’ve already been to Europe a couple of times and we hope to go back again, we do like getting around the place all through Europe, but we’ve bought a caravan now,” Hodyl said.

“Our first trip in that is in a couple of weeks and we’re heading down past Albany for five days to give it its maiden voyage as such, but we don’t really know beyond that.

“We might just decide to get in it and head off, and might not come back for a couple of years. Who knows? We’ll just have to wait and see.”