Round 2 Men’s Preview v East Perth

Swan Districts heads to Sullivan Logistics Stadium on Saturday to take on East Perth with revenge on their mind for last year’s finals series, while looking to open their WAFL Men’s account for 2025 at the same time.

Swans head to the Leederville venue on Saturday, hunting a first win of the 2025 season while the Royals are trying to back up a first up victory with the game getting underway at 2:30pm.

The day’s action at Sullivan Logistics Stadium gets underway with the Colts fixture that starts at 9:15am followed by the Reserves match up that begins at 11:45am.

Swan Districts opened its WAFL season at home at Steel Blue Oval last Saturday against West Perth but things didn’t quite go to plan with the eventual 48-point defeat.

Despite the final score line, there was still plenty of positives for the black-and-whites including captain Jesse Turner leading from the front with 44 possessions, while Leigh Kohlmann kicked four goals, Josh Cipro had 27 touches, Jye Chalcraft 23, Jehb O’Donohue 20 and games record holder Tony Notte 20 to go with eight marks.

On the back of finishing in top spot last year and then making the grand final before losing to Peel Thunder, East Perth started the new season last Saturday with a hard fought 15-point victory also at Sullivan Logistics Stadium against Subiaco.

The last time Swans and the Royals played one another was in the second semi-final last year with East Perth winning by 28 points in front of 5223 people, also at Leederville.

Swan Districts did win a one-point thriller prior to that in Round 12 last year at Steel Blue Oval, but coming into Saturday’s clash the Royals have won four of the last five games against the black-and-whites.

Swan Districts has added Luke Cotellessa, Ethyn Kane, Ned Reiger and Troy Yukich to their squad for the clash with East Perth on Saturday from the team that lost to West Perth at home last week.

Should any, or all, of Cotellessa, Kane and Reiger make the final 22 it will be their league debuts, with Kane coming off 34 possessions and seven marks in the Reserves’ win over West Perth last Saturday at Steel Blue Oval.

Reiger also had 15 possessions and five entries inside the forward 50 in that win to put his hand up, while Cotellessa impressed with 23 disposals and four inside 50s.

If Yukich comes into the team to help Nathan Blakely in the task up against East Perth behemoth Scott Jones, it will be his 43rd league appearance in the WAFL but first with Swan Districts since 2018.

Having come through the ranks with Swans, he made his league debut in Round 2, 2016, with his first five games all at Steel Blue Oval.

Following the 2018 season, Yukich joined West Perth where he would play a further 22 matches including being the starting ruckman in the premiership triumph of 2022 for the Falcons.

That would turn out to be his last WAFL game with him managing just two reserves games at the Falcons in 2023 and four in 2024 before returning to Swan Districts in 2025 and now having a chance to resume his career in black-and-white.

East Perth is coming off a season-opening win against Subiaco last week and as a result the Royals have seen no need to make any changes to their line-up to take on Swan Districts on Saturday.

Jayden Peak, Ethan Regan, Patrick Reilly and Jacob Spasevski are the four emergencies for the game for East Perth but unless there is a late change to their line-up they’ll have the same 22 that beat Subiaco last Saturday.