Josh Rotham says it was a surreal moment running onto HBF Arena wearing black and blue at the weekend.

For the first time in his young footballing career, the West Perth product – who was drafted to the Eagles with pick No.37 during last year’s NAB AFL Draft – felt the ire of the Falcons’ faithful.

“It was a bit different,” Rotham joked.

“It was good to go back to the old ground, as I used to train there most nights and play there most weekends. I never got to play with those guys in the league side, so it was nice to line up in my new colours against them.

“They came out pretty hard at me in the first quarter, but it wasn't too brutal. There were a few comments, but nothing that threw me off.

“There were a few good one liners, but I won’t go into detail about them. They were coming from a few of the older boys.”

Unfortunately, Rotham’s first outing as a Royal at HBF Arena wasn’t a fruitful one.

The Royals challenged West Perth for the first three quarters of the match, but a fourth-term fade gifted the home team a comfortable 14.15 (99) to 12.6 (78) victory.

Luke Webster’s men are attempting to retain possession and move the ball with pace this year, but Rotham reckoned the team overdid it against his old side on Sunday.

“That’s what we’ve been training all pre-season, but I think when we need to release a kicker and get the ball inside 50 we’ve got to do it and not keep waxing. We've got to refrain from giving that extra handball when we don’t have to,” he said.

“We were very rushed. It was probably a bit of surge versus shape. We overused the ball by hand, which you can see in the stats. We had 30-40 more handballs than we did kicks and we normally go two-to-one.”

Although he was disappointed with the result, Rotham said there was a lot to like about the Royals' performance.

East Perth's defence held up reasonably well under intense pressure and the team's forward line functioned much better than it did against Peel in round one.

Rotham was confident the Royals could register their first won of the year against Swan Districts on Saturday.

“We’ve just got to keep backing ourselves in,” he said.

“There’s been a lot of positives from these first two games even though we haven’t got the choccies. As long as we back in our game plan and play our game, I think we will go into this week with a good chance.”