TOPIC:

Beasley Hutton wrote:

Success Hill wrote:

Southerner wrote: those would probably be the big scores & wins against East Fremantle - up to that point Swans had a reasonably barren record against East Fremantle

Agree with Southerner. The 1980 season started with a tremendous bang over a club we often struggled against either at home or especially away. It took us ten-years to win at EF - we never achieved it during 1961-1963 - and Perth Oval wasn't much better. I found 1980 strange because the defining game for me was Round 1.

SH & AR I am sure I heard Keith Slater once say he never played in a winning side at EF Oval during his playing career?

You've a good memory BH - he did say that. Our first win there was in 1964 - by which time Spud had taken on the CC role at Subi. And I do not think we won there in 1967 when he returned to Bassendean

There were important factors behind the Swan Districts rise , which started half way through 1979 , and probably none more so than the astute recruiting of Graham Melrose by John Todd

Melly brought with him vast experience from both WANFL & VFL and Toddy has said that professionalism transformed all methods from training to match day

He was huge in 1980 at various times - think Preliminary Final v East Perth with 9 goals

that is an amazing stat on Slater in regards EF oval; the Phil Lambs of this world would have played around 150 games before Subi won at the ground, too.

Thanks for the topic AR, 1980 was a bittersweet season for this Swans supporter. I saw them play the most sublime footy but then it all ended in disappointment.

Swans definitely played their best footy in the first half of the season in 1980
111 point victory over reigning premiers EF in round 1,
57 point victory over Perth in round 3
131 point victory over Subiaco in round 5
39 point win over South as discussed in round 7
85 point win over EF at Shark Park in round 8.

The absolute peak of Swans form for that year though was Round 6 where Swans played West Perth in a match of the day clash at Bassendean. At that stage Swans were unbeaten on 20 points and West Perth were coming second on 16 , their only loss to that stage was by 7 points (to SF). The Falcons also had a slightly higher percentage than Swans going into that game having smashed EF by over 100 points the previous week. It was all set up to be a classic encounter and 22,000 people turned up on a perfect day for footy, which is still the record crowd attending a game at Bassendean.

The game was a reasonable contest until half time with Swans leading by 22 points at the break. However the 2nd half was a massacre with Swans scoring 19 -10 to West Perth 3-2 to completely obliterate them by 126 points. That was a complete team performance and the form continued for most of the first half of the year, but as the year went on Swans lost some momentum and it became obvious that South Fremantle were quickly catching up to them and eventually surpassed them.

The Swans team of 1980 were a case study of the term "April Premiers"

no problem, mikeh, thanks for your post too, mate.

Beasley Hutton wrote:

Success Hill wrote:

Southerner wrote: those would probably be the big scores & wins against East Fremantle - up to that point Swans had a reasonably barren record against East Fremantle

Agree with Southerner. The 1980 season started with a tremendous bang over a club we often struggled against either at home or especially away. It took us ten-years to win at EF - we never achieved it during 1961-1963 - and Perth Oval wasn't much better. I found 1980 strange because the defining game for me was Round 1.

SH & AR I am sure I heard Keith Slater once say he never played in a winning side at EF Oval during his playing career?

I am missing 6 games Spud played in for Subiaco but my records have him 0-12 at East Fremantle Oval, which included 0-10 when playing for Swans.

Going off topic here but I wonder what the longest streak of losses by a club at an oval is? I can’t recall if it’s still going but I know East Fremantle hadn’t won at Claremont Oval since 1997 or something.

Great to see WAFLvideoarchive will be showing a SD vs EP clash from Round 2 in 1980 this Saturday night from 8.30pm on their youtube channel, that should be great viewing for all of us who loved that era of footy.
Interestingly I was reading something recently from a SD player from 1980 and he mentioned that our best performance of 1980 the Preliminary Final vs EP was probably our Grand Final in retrospect unfortunately it was just played a week before the actual real GF took place!

Tiger of old wrote: Going off topic here but I wonder what the longest streak of losses by a club at an oval is? I can’t recall if it’s still going but I know East Fremantle hadn’t won at Claremont Oval since 1997 or something.

Peel lost 30 in a row at Rushton Park which is the record. East Freo lost 15 games at Claremont from 1997-2010

It’s all on my website mate...

waflfootyfacts.net/team/all/streaks.php#12

ric -- thanks mate
bh --yep, that is another record achieved by the side: the score and possibly margin in a preliminary final.

Slater could have won the flag in 1964, as well, re-calling that is side was only narrowly beaten by the Tigers, whom of course, went on to win the flag.