Round 15 WAFL Preview v West Coast Eagles

Swan Districts is back to Steel Blue Oval on Saturday afternoon to play host to the West Coast Eagles attempting to win consecutive WAFL matches.

Swans are fresh off a stirring and thrilling two-point win last Sunday against Subiaco also at Steel Blue Oval and can keep those slim finals hopes alive with another win against the Eagles on Saturday afternoon.

Prior to the League game, there will be a Swans Past Players game featuring the likes of Ross Fitzgerald, Mike Richardson, Don Langsford, Don Holmes, Kevin Caton, Tallan Ames, Travis Edmonds, Travis Casserly, Wade Twomey, Llane Spaanderman, Greg Walker Shane Beros, Shane Strempl, Peter Ware, Brett Wolfenden, Ron Boucher and Stan Nowotny just to name a few. The Past Players game will start at 12:45pm.

The League game will follow at 2.10pm. 

Swan Districts comes into the game fresh off that win against Subiaco last week which saw Tom Edwards deliver a four-goal final quarter which helped Swans get their fifth win of the season.

Now coming into Saturday's clash and Swan Districts sits on a 5-8 record but with Subiaco having also lost three straight matches, finals isn’t quite out of reach with the Lions sitting fifth at 8-5.

That does mean Swans need to keep winning and can't afford a slip up against the winless Eagles on Saturday at Steel Blue Oval.

West Coast might have lost 12 of its 13 matches this season with a draw with Perth thrown in there and the Eagles haven’t won a game in the WAFL since Round 10 last year, but they were a vastly more competitive outfit last Saturday night.

After West Coast conceded the first eight goals of the game, they were able to outscore the Falcons the rest of the way to only end up losing by 28 points in what was their smallest losing margin of the season.

Swan Districts, though, did beat West Coast by 81 points in their last meeting back in Round 8 and a repeat performance on Saturday will keep them in the finals mix especially if Subiaco is able to keep losing to help that cause.

Going back to last week and it was a special occasion for Swan Districts to win both at reserves and league level in memory of the late Ken Ball.

Reserves coach and league assistant coach Greg Harding was proud that the club was able to celebrate the wins against Subiaco on such an occasion.

"It was good to get a couple of wins last weekend after the club lost one of our favourite people during the week, Kenny Ball, who was heavily involved in our community as a copper for a long time and has been at our football club for 55 years," Harding told 91.3 SportFM.

"So it was a really nice day to have his family there in the rooms with his two boys and his wife Evelyn, and all their grandkids and so forth. It was a really nice day for us to be able to get over the line because he hated Subi and to have a couple of wins after losing one of our great volunteers made it a good day."

Reflecting back on the season and it's been one with challenges for Swans with the string of heartbreaking, tight losses and the string of injuries to key players along the way.

While others might not like to hear those reasons for the way things have panned out, they are reality but Harding and those involved at Swan Districts will continue to take plenty of positives out of the season.

"When you talk about our year you start to sound like you're making excuses, but I think we've only finished two or three games without having lost someone through injury and ending up with 22 at our disposal," Harding said.

"We've just had an awful year with serious injury which has hurt within games and the most we've had from our first choice 22 for the year is about 16. We've just had an awful run with major injuries to key players and you talk about Fisher, Anderson and Erceg who are among those. 

"They are fairest and best winners, and one of our captains so that makes it hard. When you take six or seven of your best players out, it makes it hard to win games of footy but the problem you've got when you start talking injuries you start talking excuses and nobody likes to hear.

"We've got a lot of real positives to take out of the year, but at the end of the day we're likely to miss finals and at the start of the year we thought we could definitely compete against anyone in the competition so it's a disappointment we won't be there in September."