In his second season, Gulden played in every game of the 2022 season as the team progressed to the Grand Final, bring his career tally to 43 games.
Gulden had a season average of 19.2 disposals, 13.5 kicks, 3.6 tackles per game, including a career high 33 disposals in Round 20 against GWS and career high 7 tackles in the Preliminary Final against Collingwood.
Gulden also kicked 18 goals over the course of the season, putting himself at sixth overall of most goals by a Swans player in 2022. He sat behind Lance Franklin (52), Isaac Heeney (49), Will Hayward (34), Tom Papley (32) and Chad Warner (20).
When reflecting at the end of the season, just following the Swans defeat to Geelong in the last game of the season, the 20-year-old remained positive about the future, noting how the adversity and loss would continue to build the connection between his fellow teammates.
“It’s really disappointing. It doesn’t matter how old we are, we all really wanted to win,” Gulden said.
“To end the way it did, it was pretty shattering for all of us but I believe it will make us a lot closer as a group. Particularly us young boys, it’s been a really exciting year for a lot of us and a majority of us have signed extensions with the club as well to be here for more years to come and I think that is a real exciting thing for all of us.
“I know it has been mentioned a lot throughout the year but we are an extremely tight group, particularly us younger boys.
“Coming into pre-season, we are going to have a fire in our belly and we are going to push each other to get better.”
While relatively happy with his 2022 campaign, Gulden says there are plenty of improvements and areas to focus on this upcoming pre-season.
“I was pretty happy overall with my season. I thought I improved from my first year which is obviously something I wanted to do,” Gulden said.
“I got to spend a bit more time in the midfield this year which was really exciting but I still have a lot to learn and a lot to improve on.
“I am going to get my couple of points that I want to focus on this pre-season and continue to keep building because there are still a lot of areas I can improve.”
