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The Swan Districts Football Club, nicknamed the Swans, is an Australian rules football club playing in the West Australian Football League (WAFL). The club is based at Bassendean Oval, in Bassendean, an eastern suburb of Perth, Western Australia. The club was formed in 1932, and joined the then-Western Australian National Football League (WANFL) in 1934, acting as a successor to the Midland Junction Football Club, which had disbanded during World War I, in the Perth Hills region. ==History== Swan Districts finished seventh on the WANFL ladder winning seven out of 21 games in their debut season in 1934.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=WAFL Ladder – 1934 League Ladder )〕 The presence of established WANFL players like inaugural captain-coach “Judda” Bee from East Fremantle and Fred Sweetapple from West Perth was critical to the fledgling club’s competitiveness. In 1935, Swans finished sixth on the WANFL Ladder with six wins and twelve losses and George Krepp won the Sandover Medal. The 1936 season saw the Swans pick up nine wins and eleven losses but still finish seventh on the League Ladder. The 1937 season saw Swan Districts, under new coach Jim Ditchburn, finish in third place on the League Ladder with 14 wins and 7 losses, and play in their first finals series. Ted Holdsworth kicked 109 goals in the first 14 games before injury ended his season and East Perth beat them in the first semi-final 13.9 (87) to 11.7 (73). Swan Districts had another good season in 1938, finishing third with 11 wins and nine losses but were again beaten in the first semi-final by East Perth 8.18 (66) – 9.11 (65).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Full Points Footy – Swan Districts )〕 In 1939, with the loss of champion spearhead Holdsworth to Kalgoorlie, Swans slid to sixth on the ladder with seven wins from twenty games. In the following two seasons, despite Holdsworth’s return, the club slid still further to finish last with only two wins in 1940 and three in 1941. Due to the Second World War the WANFL suspended its senior competition and implemented an under age competition to replace it. In 1942 Swans were unable to raise a side to play and did not compete at all.〔 By 1943 Swan Districts assembled a side to compete in the under-age competition and performed exceedingly well, finishing fourth on the ladder with nine wins and eight losses, then winning the first semi-final against West Perth and the preliminary Final against Subiaco. Swans thus played in the their first Grand Final only to be defeated by East Fremantle, the final score being East Fremantle 17.15 (117) to Swan Districts 11.11 (77).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=WAFL Online – 1943 Home and Away season )〕 Jim Davies became the second Swan Districts player to win a Sandover Medal in 1944 with 33 votes in what was otherwise a forgettable season with Swans finishing sixth on the ladder, but in the restored open-age competition of 1945 their fortunes improved as they finished fourth on the league ladder only to be defeated in the first semi-final by South Fremantle. However, Swan Districts fell off dramatically for the next fifteen seasons. During this period they never finished higher than sixth of eight teams, and overall won only sixty-one and drew one of their 301 matches, suffering from the fact that much of the area around Bassendean was “un-allotted” so that players such as Keith and Roy Harper, and Frank Coulson moved to more successful clubs. They were nonetheless instrumental in having the WANFL introduce its “Provident Fund” to allow league revenue to be shared amongst the clubs. In 1957 Swan Districts won their first Colts Premiership, repeating the dose in 1958,〔(The First Forty Years )〕 and these teams provided the nucleus of their successes in the early to middle 1960s. After finishing last in 1960, Swan Districts appointed Haydn Bunton junior as senior captain-coach in early 1961, and improvement was immediate. Swan Districts won twelve and drew two of their twenty-one regular season matches to be a clear second and an ingenious tactic by Bunton against champion East Perth ruckman “Polly” Farmer〔Devaney, John; ''Full Points Footy’s WA Football Companion''; p. 293. ISBN 9780955689710〕 won them a huge upset in the Grand Final, and two more premierships followed in 1962 and 1963. Swans’ fall afterwards was however just as rapid as their rise from 1960 to 1961. In 1964 Swans won seven of their first nine matches, but then State representative calls and form lapses affected the team so badly that they won only two of their final twelve encounters. After achieving their most successful home-and-away season under new captain coach Fred Castledine before being overwhelmed by a mediocre East Fremantle team in the 1965 Grand Final, they fell off completely in the following eight seasons. Swans in this era were hindered by the lack of a full-time coach or secretary that made it harder for them to recruit than other WANFL clubs.〔‘Castledine Sees Need for Change’; ''The West Australian'', 14 August 1967, p. 30〕 In 1968, Swan Districts came nearer to a winless season than any team in senior WA(N)FL competition between 1918 and 1998: winning only one game after the siren by a point against East Fremantle, and scored their all-time lowest score against East Perth. Swan Districts were also last in 1970 and 1971, and not until 1974 did they again make the finals, under the coaching of Jack Ensor, who most unusually never played senior League Football.〔()〕〔(The Coaches )〕 Again, however, they declined abruptly, falling to wooden spooners in 1977 and 1978. John Todd, who took the coaching reins at Bassendean in 1977 and began with a big clean-out of players, brought with him a new winning culture, one which would emulate that of the Haydn Bunton era. By the 1980s, Swans became the dominant side in the WAFL, winning three straight flags in 1982, 1983 and 1984. Swan Districts fell drastically to be last in 1986 and 1988, but rose equally rapidly and after a stint coaching the West Coast Eagles in 1988 and 1989, Todd returned to the club and after being fifth with ten wins in 1989 they won a seventh premiership, beating Claremont 16.7 (103) to 10.17 (77). However, after several unsuccessful finals campaigns between 1991 and 1994 Todd returned to South Fremantle, where he began his football career, and Swan Districts fell rapidly downhill on and off the field under coaches Graham Melrose (1995 and 1996), Phil Cronan (1997 and 1998), Peter Wilson (1999) and Todd again from 2000 to 2002.〔Western Australian Football Budget, Grand Final, September 21, 2008.〕 Between 1995 and 2002 they did not play in the finals and overall won only 51 of 158 games. At the end of 2002, a season where Swans ran last in all three grades and were as lucky as in 1968 to escape a winless season in the seniors, the club’s desperate financial trouble〔Pike; Chris; Greg Harding was appointed as senior coach for the 2011 season.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Perth Now - New Swan Districts coach Greg Harding has big shoes to fill )〕 The club had a poor season finishing the season with only six wins from twenty games and finishing second from bottom of the league ladder, but rebounded in 2012 to finish second to a powerful Claremont combination only to lose both finals. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Swan Districts Football Club」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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