Premiership the goal but culture first for Swans in WAFLW

After a grand final and preliminary final appearance in his first two seasons, Swan Districts WAFLW coach Adam Dancey is making no secret they are shooting for the 2023 premiership but he does urge those expectations to be realistic.

Dancey is preparing for his third season as coach of Swan Districts in the WAFLW competition. His first season in charge saw Swans produce a standout home and away season to win the minor premiership before losing to Peel Thunder in the grand final.

Then last year, they did a strong job to again qualify for the finals and reach the preliminary final before losing to Claremont and just falling short of a second straight grand final appearance.

Never one to stand still, Dancey has looked to oversee plenty of changes and growth once again for Swans coming into the 2023 WAFLW season with the ultimate goal of coming away with the premiership.

"We're different again and we've been different every year. This is my third year with the club so I suppose you look at the first year and think it was really cool," Dancey said.

"The second year, we didn’t do too bad but we had a lot of different challenges and disruptions. Now this season, we've deliberately gone different and we are going to look different with our jumpers, the way the team is structured is different and our size and speed will be different.

"We've really tried to make sure that we're grabbing hold of talent who wants to be part of what we're building. That's going to represent change for us which is really good. Where that leads us nobody knows, but the reality is that we want to win the flag.

"We're chasing a premiership and were not going to hide from that, and we've spoken to the girls about it. It may or may not happen, a lot of things have to go right to win a premiership throughout the entirety of the year," Dancey added.

"But that's what we're chasing, it's state league footy and we want to be the best. We think we've got the group to do that, but every team at this stage is going to say that.

"With the player movement and the extra teams coming in, I think everyone will look a little bit different so it will be about assessing after the first half of the season where we sit and what we need to do to make sure we're still in the hunt for the premiership."

Whether it's the men's or women's program, the Swan Districts Football Club is making no secrets of its premiership push across the board coming into 2023.

While for Dancey he sees that as a positive and he certainly is looking to become a premiership coach this season with Swans in the WAFLW season too, he also wants to see continued improvement in the way the female program is supported.