Royal Seal shooting for a premiershipFriday, August 16, 2013 - 2:51 AM - by Chris Pike

MAT Seal had a day out last Saturday for East Perth booting a career-best seven goals but the 134-game veteran remains focused on striving for finals success and that's as much for club greats Craig Wulff and Michael Swan as it is for himself.

East Perth returned to fourth position on the WAFL ladder following last week's 68-point victory over Subiaco in the battle of the Medibank Stadium co-tenants with the 26-year-old Seal starring with his haul of seven goals in the absence of big men Scott Lycett (West Coast) and Josh Smith (off injured).

That now has the Royals well-placed to play finals again in 2013 with three games to finish the home and away season against Perth, South Fremantle and then Subiaco once more.

The Royals have not played in a grand final since the last of the hat-trick of premierships in 2002 with the closest being a 2010 preliminary final appearance against Swan Districts at Steel Blue Oval.

That means that Seal hasn’t tasted what it's like to play on grand final day as he desperately chases a premiership with East Perth, but he would be just as happy for co-captain and 219-game veteran Wulff and former captain and 167-game forward Swan who have also yet to taste the grand final stage.

"I love Wulffy and Swanny, and those guys are making everyone continue to go as hard as they do. It's pretty hard to match them but they are inspirational to the younger guys and even us older guys. I don’t know how they do it, but they keep backing up week after week, and it would be great to win a premiership for guys like that and with them," Seal said.

"You are here to play finals footy and I've played over 130 games and never reached a grand final so that always is the dream. I think we do have the side that can get there if we play the way we should. Who knows when I will finish playing and if it's this year or next but at this stage of my career I am just treating every game like it could be my last."

East Perth led by just four points at half-time last Saturday against Subiaco, but with Seal booting four goals himself in the third quarter, the Royals booted 14 goals to three in the second half to run 68-point winners.

The most impressive thing was that the Royals' 20 goals came without any from Lycett and Smith with the forward-line consisting of experienced veterans Seal, Swan and Wulff plus Brock Higgins and Paul Johnson rotating through there and the ruck and then Dean Cadwallader and Jarrad Oakley-Nicholls providing some pace.

It is a new look forward-line in a lot of ways in the second half of the season, but Seal likes the way it's coming together.

"I was lucky to get on the end of a few and you never want Smithy to go down, but when he does it changes the dimensions of our forward-line a fair bit and it ended up being me this week who got lucky. It could have been any of us forwards, though, really with the way the whole side was playing," he said.

"The midfield is starting to use the other options as well because in the past we have been a bit Smith conscious.

"We have Jarrad and Cads down there who are quick guys and we need their pace, and then we have Swanny's experience and we've had a bit of Wulffy there as well with his hardness lately. We have a good mix of old and young and pace and some of the older blokes down there at the moment."

Seal has been a permanent member of the East Perth league side basically since making his debut in 2005 aside from an injury-ruined 2008 campaign.

After a solid enough start in the first seven games of 2013, new coach Brian Dawson felt that Seal wasn’t doing quite enough and sent him back to the reserves for a period and while that was hard to take at the time, Seal took it on chin, worked on what he needed to and he has come back well to cement his spot in the side once again.

"Obviously when you get sent back you want to try and stay positive, and get back in the side where you think you should be playing footy so it was a wakeup call. I'm just glad I'm back into the side now and hopefully can push towards finals," Seal said.

"Halfway through the year I wasn’t doing the things that I needed to and I wasn’t tackling as much as I should so Daws sent me back to get it back into my game.

"I came back into the side as a midfielder for the first time in about 10 years and that has really inspired me to start running harder, and it has been showing in my form so it has been good."

That might have meant that Seal's relationship with Dawson wasn’t immediately off to a perfect start, but East Perth's leading goalkicker from 2009 didn’t let it get him down and he is in fact enjoyed Dawson's coaching approach after spending the last four years under Tony Micale.

"Daws has been good and it's been refreshing to have another new coach even though I've had four or five now," he said.

''He's completely different to 'Booby' and maybe even the complete opposite because he doesn’t really scream or should but he still gets his point across.

"He has made some big calls throughout the year and they've paid off, so hopefully we can get some success as a team like he got when he was at Swans."

Seal has played in four finals in his career with three first semi-finals including kicking four goals in last year's loss to East Fremantle but the Royals have lost two of the three with the win coming over the Sharks in 2010 on the way to the preliminary final.

While East Perth is now in a good spot to play finals ahead of matches against the Demons, Bulldogs and Lions, Seal and the rest of the Royals know how important it is just to keep winning starting this week against a Perth team still in finals contention.

"Every week is a final now and that's what we keep saying. We just have to keep winning and we will get there, but this was a great team effort and good way to start off what we hope is a winning run into the finals," Seal said.

"We have been in pretty good form for the last seven or eight weeks even though we had the two losses against Claremont and West Perth, but we still played well in parts of those games. We are now pretty confident going into these last three games that we can win them and make a run into the finals.

"They are a really good side and we've had some good contests with them already this year. They have a dangerous forward-line so our backs need to be on song and their midfield is second to none. We just need to bring the right effort, though, and we should get the right result."