Swans building towards sustained success

Swan Districts coach Andrew Pruyn went into the State game break feeling good that things were coming together after a big win over East Fremantle not only for the rest of this WAFL season, but for the future.

Swans might have only won one of the opening five matches of the 2026 season, but the squad for this year was never built for short-term success and was done so with the plan to set up a group capable of contending at the top-of-the-table for a number of years.

While the early wins everyone hoped didn’t quite eventuate and the injury curse did strike again, the signs had been encouraging. Then it all came together with the 42-point win over the Sharks at Steel Blue Oval.

That was the ideal way to go into last week’s State game break with Pruyn feeling like the team had been building towards a performance like that.

“I think our performances in the first few rounds were sort of honourable without being fantastic, and certainly something that we felt we were building towards a decent performance,” Pruyn said on 91.3 SportFM.

“We were just hoping that the cavalry was coming sooner than later and it did all start to come together in that win.”

Forward targets make a difference

While the back-line had been holding up relatively well and the midfield were holding their own, the last piece of the puzzle to come together this year for Swan Districts was the forward-line.

But against East Fremantle prior to the State game, the signs were exciting of what that could look like with the key targets of Leigh Kohlmann and Jovan Petric, and then plenty of other versatile talented forwards around them.

“I think having a bit more of a front half for the first time was helpful,” Pruyn said.

“We had Leigh Kohlmann, Jovan Petric and Zach Provest all out there together as some key marking players so that made it a little bit difficult to match up against.

“We also put Caleb Ernst down forward and I don’t think East Fremantle the depth in the back stocks to cover all those players. We were sort of able to get a nice look at a forward-line that was able to function really well for us on the day.”

Building a new-look team this year

A big part of the plan from Pruyn and those at Swan Districts coming into 2026 was to build a squad that could all grow together at a similar time to create a culture of sustained success.

That was with the dual focus of backing in the talent emerging at Swans already and then bringing in young interstate recruits including Zach Provest, Jovan Petric, Lucas Impey, Jez Rigoni and Kade Chalcraft who could not only top up the squad, but grow with the group.

“It’s one of those ones where when you look at what you can afford with the tools that you have at your disposal and I’m talking your salary cap, your interstate recruit player points and all of these things that are set out within the parameters within the league,” Pruyn said.

“When we really looked at it, we sort of said that we could go and get one player of a high level and asked ourselves if that would move the needle, and went all the way through talking about if it would take two, three or four players.

“We had a really good look at our list and what we needed, and approached it with a longer term goal in mind rather than just trying to just get one or two players who were ready right now.

“Instead, we knew we had some terrific young kids coming through that we’re starting to see play some nice footy for us and because of that, we wanted to bring in recruits that fitted in to that where within the next hopefully one to three years we’d expect to be challenging. But also being able to hold and sustain our position at the top of the ladder.”

Starting to get healthier

While Jye Chalcraft is still yet to play this season on the back of winning the Swan Medal in 2025 and even though Jehb O’Donohue and Jarvis Pina are some time away, Pruyn is glad that the health of his team is on the improve.

Jake Pasini, Will Collins, Leigh Kohlmann and Tom Smith are now all back playing, Brandon Erceg and Lucas Impey aren’t far away, and the coach is optimistic now of how the rest of 2026 will come together.

“Jye’s still building and I’d like to say we will see him within a month and hopefully over the next three to four weeks we should be able to see him come back,” Pruyn said.

“Lucas will be back soon too, Brandon Erceg should be available too after the bye and Tom Smith played his first game in the reserves against East Fremantle so he’s coming back.

“The others are a bit longer, Jehb had surgery on his hand and I don’t expect Jarvis back for a little bit so we’re still missing a few. But there’s still some real positives into getting games into Will Collins, Jake Pasini, Luke Taylor and things are on the way up.”

Depth is looking strong

Another reason that Pruyn is so optimistic about the immediate future for Swan Districts is the depth that they have now built at the club.

The Reserves have not only won all five of their matches so far this season but done so at an average of 53 points with a host of players there banging down the door for a League opportunity.

Once they get that chance Pruyn knows they might never look back.

“Our depth is really strong and the Reserves are undefeated at the moment so we’ve got a really good mix across all positions of players that are at the same sort of level in their development,” Pruyn said.

“They’re young players who are league quality and they’re just looking for their opportunity. That’s the likes of Otis Harvey, Luke Cotellessa, Blake Kelly and we’ve got plenty there that can come in and they will be long-term players for our footy club and have huge careers for us.

“We’re very fortunate to have a really good mix of youth coming through and it’s exciting as well.

“The likes of Leo Steed as an 18-year-old to be having the impact he’s having is fantastic to see as well so there’s certainly plenty of talent coming through our program so that’s why the next few years are going to be really impressive to see.”