Swans Look At Positives But Focus On 2019 Improvement

THE second half of the 2018 season might have been challenging for Swan Districts but the plans to hit back hard in 2019 have already begun and that includes some targeted recruiting and a lot of work on getting Swans' players in the shape needed to match the likes of Subiaco.

The 2018 season under new coach Adam Pickering started so encouragingly for Swan Districts with wins in the opening two rounds over Perth and Peel Thunder before Swans went on to win five of the opening eight games to be sitting strongly inside the top five.

But things began to come apart from there and long-term injuries to Jarrad Blight and David Ellard were particularly costly along with Taryce Stewart, Adam Faulkner and Kirk Ugle unable to have the seasons hoped of them for a variety of reasons.

Add in retirements and departures along the way of the likes of Matthew Rogers, Todd Banfield and Levi Ridley didn’t help on the back of the loss of plenty of experience heading into 2018 including Tallan Ames, Ryan Crowley, Jamie Bennell and Ricky Cary.

While Swans have won just once since beating Perth in Round 9 to improve to a 5-3 record heading into this Saturday's end to the season against Claremont at Steel Blue Oval.

That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been plenty of positives particularly with the emergence of the likes of Jesse Turner, Tobe Watson, Brayden Hackett, Will Reidy, Mitch Mackenzie and the games got into youngers such as Tristen Raynor, Graydon Wilson, Patrick Italiano and Jack O'Sullivan.

Swan Districts football operations manager Phil Smart obviously is disappointed that the league team won't be taking part in finals in 2018 but that doesn't mean there aren’t positives to take out of some of things from the season.

"It's disappointing obviously not to play finals but we are probably in a rebuilding phase, which people might not like hearing, but that's just reality. We have a host of boys playing their first year of senior footy," Smart said.

"In the first half of the season we pretty much had a full squad and our senior players were all up and running, and sound.

"As the season progressed our senior players suffered injuries and a lot of them were playing through injuries so we might not have been getting the best return from those boys.

"That led to us promoting quite a lot of the young guys to get games into them and that's taken the toll on the team in the end."

Throughout the second half of the season, Smart and the coaching staff at Swan Districts have been working hard on working out which players currently at the club will be part of the future going forward and in coming up with a plan for the future.

That includes the type of players they need to recruit with an eye towards 2019 but overall, the focus and majority of any Swan Districts team going forward will be largely made up of local products.

"We have a really good group of coaches and Mick Moylan is chairman of selectors so over the last couple of months we've been doing a really in-depth list assessment of where we're at, and what we need," Smart said.

"We are pretty limited and can't do what some of the other clubs can and go and recruit half a dozen players. We are probably limited to recruiting one or two a year so we are going to need to be really specific on the type of player we recruit, and the type of person we bring into the group.

"The majority of our players will come through our colts and underage system, and 70 to 75 per cent of our league team every week are local players who have come through our development squads.

"We definitely need some run and carry in the side, and a bit of speed. We probably need another key position player too up forward. Everyone would say they need midfielders and most would say they need a centre half-forward but we probably need a key position forward and a couple of midfielders who can run and carry."

While Swans will work hard on trying to lure some ball carrying midfielders and a marking target in attack ahead of 2019, where Smart sees the real improvement really needs to come from is an improvement in the physicality of the players that are already at the club.

"We'll have a pretty hard pre-season I'd imagine and we'll really put the workload into some of the younger guys and we'll see how they cope," Smart said.

"It's been pretty obvious for the last few years now that when we compete against teams like Subiaco with the bigger and stronger bodies, we have fallen away.

"If we are to compete with those clubs and I see no reason why we can't then we have to improve physically. We do have some really exciting talent coming through the club and we have to put a lot of work into the kids to get them up to the level of teams like Subiaco."