Since connecting with the club four years ago as a New South Wales Scholarship player, Perris has always admired the endurance, lightning pace and silky skills of Swans co-captain Kieren Jack, who he now hopes to model his own game on.
While Perris already boasts impressive endurance, which saw him post two top-three finishes in the club’s three kilometre time trials over the last month, Perris told SwansTV that he intended to work closely with Jack, who has been his AFL role model for many years.
“For the first couple of weeks I was trying to stay with Dane Rampe and he obviously sets the standard pretty high and I just sat behind him for a few weeks and now since Kieren Jack has come on, it’s been those two that I look up to as runners,” Perris said.
“When the skills come out I look up to (Jack) because he’s got good skills all the time whether he’s kicking the footy or running.”
The 18-year-old said he aspired to play a similar game to that of Jack and hoped to learn as much as he could from his co-captain this pre-season.
“I need to work on the defensive part of the game, which is something Kieren Jack is really good at, as well as my two-way running to become the sort of midfielder I really want to be,” he said.
“I also want to work on my finishing, and that’s Kieren Jack again, and to be able to kick goals and hurt the opposition on the scoreboard.”
Perris, who was the inaugural member of the QBE Sydney Swans Academy, was officially named as a Swans player last Thursday when his name was called in the 2013 Rookie Draft.
The midfielder, who trained with the club at times throughout 2013 and was a regular player in the Swans reserves, said he was thrilled to finally be part of the team he’d grown up supporting.
“It was obviously a really good feeling to see my name for the first time, but the boys have been really good and made me feel like a listed player before that anyway over the last year and this year,” he said.
“I first signed a scholarship when I was 15, so for the first couple of years I was just loitering around but now to be officially a part of the club is amazing because it’s obviously been a club I’ve been looking up to since I was 15.
“It’s really good to just be a part of it now.”
