Round 8 WAFL Preview v West Coast Eagles

Swan Districts will attempt to shake off a string of heartbreaking losses when hosting the West Coast Eagles on Sunday as part of WA Day Round in the WAFL.

Swan Districts will play host to the Eagles at Steel Blue Oval on Sunday afternoon as part of the WA Day long weekend with the black-and-whites looking to record their second win of the WAFL season.

The league contest gets underway on Sunday afternoon at 1.40pm at Steel Blue Oval and will be followed by the Swan Districts' All Abilities Team playing Mandurah at the Bassendean venue from 4.30pm.

While Swan Districts and West Coast meet on Sunday as the current bottom two teams in the WAFL, the competitiveness of the two teams so far in 2023 couldn’t have been more contrasting.

Swans come into the Sunday match up with a 1-6 record, but heartbreakingly for the Swans five of those six defeats have been by seven points or fewer.

It's quite conceivable that the defeats for Swans to East Perth (one point), East Fremantle (four), West Perth (seven), Claremont (two) and Subiaco (four) could have gone the other way and the season would be looking considerably different right now.

Meanwhile for West Coast, the Eagles have lost all seven of their matches this season at an average of 98.7 points with three 100-plus point losses and the narrowest margin being the 42 points that they lost by against South Fremantle back in Round 1.

Sunday's game will be the seventh time that the two teams have met in the WAFL dating back to 2019, and Swan Districts has won all six of the meetings by an average of 27.3 points.

That included an 85-point thumping that Swans handed the Eagles in Round 17 last year at Steel Blue Oval. On that day, Swans held the Eagles to just one goal the entire afternoon and could have won by more had it not been for the kicking of 13.18 for the game.

Darcy Jones, Ryan Kemp, Chris Jones and Josh Cipro all kicked two goals each for Swan Districts while Jesse Turner racked up 40 possessions, Aidan Clarke 31, Jarvis Pina 29, Tobe Watson 27, Jehb O'Donohue 25, Sam Fisher 25, Josh Cipro 23 and Mitch Bain 21.

All six of those matches the two teams have played have all been at Steel Blue Oval as well since West Coast joined the WAFL competition as a standalone club in 2019.

Swan Districts comes into Sunday's match up after yet another devastating loss to Subiaco last Saturday at Leederville Oval, not because of the performance but how the result could so easily have again gone the other way.

Swans got off to a flying start to lead by 20 points early last week with the game's first three goals against Subiaco. And despite giving up the lead with three goals to one in the last quarter, still had a chance at the death to snatch it.

However, it was another loss for Swan Districts to deal with to leave them now with a 1-6 record coming into Sunday's match up with the bottom placed Eagles who are on their own 15-game losing streak dating back to last year.

As the bottom two teams in the competition, it's no surprise to see both struggling in a number of categories with Swan Districts both ranked eighth for scoring with 68.0 points a game and defensively with them conceding 76.9.

The Eagles are last in both categories scoring 49.7 points a game and then giving up 148.4.

The two teams are also the lowest ball winning sides in the competition with Swans averaging just 295 possessions a game and West Coast 283. That has Swan Districts averaging 29 less disposals a game than their opponents and the Eagles 122 fewer than theirs.

Swan Districts is the third best first quarter team in the competition having outscored their opponents by an average of two goals, including last week's fast start against Subiaco.

Swans are also the fifth best performing third quarter team, but in second and fourth quarters, they are ranked second last in both only ahead of the Eagles.

West Coast is ranked last across all four quarters averaging being outscored by 22 points in first terms, 33 in the second, 15 in the third and 29 in the fourth.