Round 3 WAFL Preview v Perth

Swan Districts heads to Lathlain this Saturday afternoon for a twilight fixture against Perth looking to bounce back from a first loss of the WAFL season last week against East Perth.

Swan Districts opened the new WAFL season in impressive fashion at Steel Blue Oval with a blistering finish to blow the West Coast Eagles away to score the eventual 64-point victory.

It was then a fascinating contest against East Perth at Leederville's Sullivan Logistics Stadium for a lot of last Saturday's match up.

It was a tight affair most of the way and Swan Districts took control in the first part of the second half, but couldn’t quite put the score on the board and East Perth responded from there to end up winning by 37 points.

That leaves Swan Districts with a win and a loss from the opening two rounds of the 2024 coming into this week's clash with the also 1-1 Perth when the two teams lock horns at Lathlain's Mineral Resources Park.

It's a twilight fixture as well with the game getting underway from 4.10pm on Saturday afternoon.

Swan Districts opened the season beating West Coast by 64 points at Steel Blue Oval before then losing to East Perth by 37 points, so Saturday's game is an important one to improve to 2-1 and to stay ahead of the ledger and not be playing catch up again in 2024.

The black-and-whites come up against a vastly improved Perth team playing a second season under highly regarded coach Peter German.

The Demons started their 2024 season ending an eight-year losing streak against Subiaco and even though they lost to West Perth by 48 points last week, they will provide Swans with a stern test this week.

Coming into Saturday's game and Swan Districts is on a seven-game winning streak against Perth including a pair of wins last season by six points at Steel Blue Oval and 28 points at Mineral Resources Park.

That Round 9 game at Bassendean was a remarkable contest where Swans ended up securing the win thanks to a Jarrod Cameron goal after the siren.

The last time Swans have lost to the Demons was back in Round 8, 2019 and that was also at Mineral Resources Park.

Nik Rokahr is one fresh face at Swan Districts this season who has had a blistering start to his WAFL career in the midfield averaging 31.5 possessions a game over the opening two rounds.

He has joined Swans on the back of winning a SANFL premiership and winning two fairest and best awards at Norwood over the past four years after growing up in Shepparton, country Victoria, and having stints playing in the VFL for Geelong and in the Northern Territory.

He has wasted no time settling in at Swan Districts and now hopes as a team they can put together a full four quarters against Perth on Saturday.

"Over the summer we've generated a lot of belief with how we've been able to train and I think in the practice matches they gave us a bit of an indication of where we were at," Rokahr said.

"So we took a lot of confidence out of those games and we knew East Perth are one of the teams who would be up there this year so it would be a good test for us.

"It was probably just 10 to 15 minutes throughout the whole game that really hurt us and we're pretty filthy at ourselves for those let downs.

"I think it just goes to show that when we are switched on and playing the footy that we want to play that we can be right up there in games. For us it's just about staying in games for longer and that will give us a great opportunity."

The colts match up with Swan Districts taking on Perth stats the action on Saturday starting at 10.55am before the reserves contest begins at 1.25pm.