Recruits, young players look to skyrocket Swans

With a focus on young recruits and blooding the club’s youth, and welcoming back key players from injury, and Swan Districts coach Andrew Pruyn has plenty of reasons to think his team can skyrocket back up the WAFL ladder in 2026.

Coming off a preliminary final appearance in 2024, the 2025 season was one that never got off the ground for Swan Districts and most of that was purely on a personnel front.

It started with losing players in a number of ways before the season even started, then the injuries never let up the entire way through the campaign.

That has now happened and there’s good reason for Pruyn to be feeling good about how Swan Districts are now looking heading towards the new season which begins against the reigning premiers South Fremantle on Good Friday at Steel Blue Oval.

It’s a combination of the players still on board, an exciting youthful band of Victorian recruits, the blooding of players coming up from the colts system, and players back from long-term injury that is all behind the reasons for Pruyn’s optimism.

As a result, he sees no reason Swan Districts can’t put themselves right back in the finals hunt in 2026.

“I don’t know if you do rebuilds in the WAFL because you can fluctuate so quickly and if you get it right, and you get close to your best 23 players out on the park, then I think that it’s been proven you can really skyrocket up the ladder,” Pruyn told 91.3 SportFM.

“I’d be pushing that we should be around that top five mark to try and push for finals this year, that’s sort of our aim. Prior to that, we just have to make sure we can get our best players out there in order for that to be achievable.”

Given the success that Swan Districts have had with Victorian recruits in recent times, it did seem the obvious place to look particularly in the key areas of needs including a ruckman, some forwards and added depth in the midfield.

That checklist has been impressively ticked off with Lucas Impey filling that ruck void while Zach Provest and Jovan Petric will be able to help in the forward-line, Kade Chalcraft in the midfield and Jez Rigoni and Caleb Ernst add plenty of versatility.

Throw in local recruits Clint Hinchliffe and Simon Hayward, and Pruyn likes how the squad has come together.

“We’ve added a bit and we sort of went down a different tact and with the exception of Clint Hinchliffe, we’ve sort of gone after quite a lot of the younger sort of guys who are the 19 to 21 year olds,” Pruyn said.

“We’ve added a 19-year-old ruckman, a couple of forwards, a rebounding half-back, and a sort of a utility inside-mid type in Kade Chalcraft.

“With the exception again of Clint who we got out of the Amateurs and we picked up Simon Hayward who’s a former Perth player, the rest with Lucas Impey, Zach Provest, Jez Rigoni, Kade Chalcraft, Caleb Ernst, Jovan Petric all come out of the Victorian VFL system.”

Beyond the players who have been added at Swan Districts for 2026, Pruyn wants to make sure the young talent who have come through the development system will be rewarded with opportunities too.

“We’ve definitely got some really good kids coming through and our colts system has done and proven itself over time that it can produce some really good kids,” Pruyn added.

“We’re really conscious about making sure there’s a position for those kids and we don’t want to fill the team full of recruits and not be able to bring our own kids through.

“Graduating this year will be someone like Blake Kelly who I’d expect to play senior footy and then we’ve still got the likes of Otis Harvey, Luke Cotellessa and these types of guys who are going to get to the level and be really servants of our footy club in years to come.”

On top of the recruits and the young players who will receive opportunities, gun players like midfield pair Zane Trew and Jarvis Pina, and defensive stars Will Collins and Jake Pasini played a combined 12 matches in 2025.

They are all looking good for a significant impact in 2026 and will be basically like new recruits for Swan Districts too with all of them bringing experience of being on AFL lists with them.

“Both Jarvis and Zane have done a full pre-season, and Zane only played three games last year and Jarvis played six so we’re confident that we’re going to see Jake Pasini and Will Collins too,” Pruyn said.

“We didn’t see much of either of them last year so if we can get those guys out there, they are basically like recruits for us given that they barely played last year at all.”