Swans go down in a nailbiter!

Swans cruised past Subiaco in the Preliminary Final on their way to the Grand Final against East Perth at HBF Stadium yesterday.

East Perth started strongly with a dominant first half from Tom McHugh and their skipper, Ricky Cox, blowing the lead out to 7 goals at half time. At this stage, it looked like it was going to be a complete demolition, and there wouldn’t have been anyone in the large crowd that would have given Swans a chance at this stage.

But through the unfailing encouragement and leadership of our captain, Toby Anscombe, we started to wrestle back some of the momentum with goals from Ben Moncrieff, the leading goal scorer for the inaugural season. Still at three quarter time, no one would have argued with the officials if they had started to attach the blue and black ribbons to the premiership trophy.

The first quarter got under way with a flurry of goals from Moncrieff and the roar within the stadium lifted. Swans started to believe and supporters watching on were on their feet.

With 90 seconds remaining, Swans got to within a point after another Moncrieff goal and with our momentum, it seemed that we might just be able to pull off a Christmas miracle. The next centre clearance was crucial and East Perth’s Cox and McHugh managed to force the ball forward and score the sealer to take the game out to 7 points and break the hearts of the gallant Swans with less than a minute to go.

The first season of the WA Wheelchair Football League has been a great success. After building from a small group of 13 players in the middle of the year, and only 2 people having played Wheelchair footy before, the skills and confidence grew each week with a lot of games going down to the wire. Bring on season 2022!