Round 9 WAFL Preview v Perth

SWAN Districts will be attempting to make it back-to-back wins for the first time this season when playing host to Perth on Sunday at Steel Blue Oval.

Swans scored a confidence boosting 81-point win last Sunday against the West Coast Eagles but now need to keep that momentum going back at home to the second bottom placed Perth this Sunday.

The black-and-whites improved to a 2-6 record for the season with that win against the Eagles last Sunday but they do still sit three games behind the fifth placed East Perth on the WAFL ladder and need to start stringing some wins together.

The league clash on Sunday at Steel Blue Oval between the Swans and Demons will begin at 2.10pm and will be televised live on Channel 7.

The day at Bassendean will begin with the colts clash at 9.10am followed by the reserves match up at 11.40am.

For the first time this WAFL season, Swans will attempt to make it consecutive wins up against the Demons at Steel Blue Oval on Sunday.

Both Swan Districts and Perth come into the contest with identical 2-6 records so need a win to stay in touch with the top five, but the percentage for Swans is over 38 points higher than that of the Demons highlighting the difference in the competitiveness for the most part.

Swan Districts scored the emphatic win over West Coast last Sunday by 81 points on the back of yet another heartbreaking four-point loss to Subiaco with Swans having lost five matches already in 2023 by seven points or fewer.

Meanwhile, of Perth's six losses this season, they have all come by at least 26 points and included the 84-point defeat at the hands of Claremont last Saturday.

What Sunday's game presents for Swan Districts is a chance to potentially move back within two games of the top five and with a good percentage, finals would be well and truly back within reach.

Coming into Sunday's match up and Swans have won their past five games against the Demons by an average of 24.6 points. That included two wins last year by a combined 22 points.

The last win for Perth against Swan Districts was back in Round 8, 2019 at Lathlain. The Demons also won at Bassendean in the same year with the nine-point win in Round 3.

However, since then and Swans have won their past three home matches against the Demons with a victory each in the past three seasons.

One of the stars in last week's win for Swans against the Eagles was Tom Edwards who kicked a career-best six goals and was named in the WAFL Team of the Week as a result.

He is now looking forward to Swans trying to keep their momentum going this Sunday against the Demons and to keep playing well at Steel Blue Oval to defend home turf.

"A win on Sunday could really set us up well for the second half of the year because we haven’t really had the start we were hoping for," Edwards said.

"We just have to put that in the back of our mind now and look forward, but against Perth this week it's going to be a huge game for us. We'll have to make sure that we take care of business.

"Obviously last year we defended Steel Blue really well and played really well at home, I think we were something like 8-1 at home. We do like playing at home but it was tough to cough up those couple of close ones at the start of this year.

"But we've just tried to work on that, take things away and really try to build into the second start of the season because it has been a bit of a slower start than we would have liked."