Mark it down. Make a note of it. Luke Partington’s performance against West Perth yesterday was a coming of age game.

From a possessions standpoint, Partington’s 22-disposal effort at Leederville Oval was his least productive game of the 2017 WAFL season.

However, as the old adage goes, quality is better than quantity. Partington was exact with his 22 disposals, utilised his outside runners to the benefit of the team and pushed forward to kick three pivotal goals.

He also impacted the play without the ball in hand.

The 20-year-old laid four effective tackles, effected one smother and applied 11 pressure acts against one of the best midfields in the competition.

Partington said he was pleased to get some reward for his efforts.

“I obviously didn’t find as much of the footy, but it was nice to get up forward and get on the end of a few and finish them off,” he said.

“That’s probably been my biggest challenge the past few weeks. I’ve kicked a few points lately, so it was nice to finish off my work and get the reward for it.

“Everyone wants to be a goal kicking midfielder. As midfielders we rotate forward and it’s always nice to get on the end of a few.”

As pleased as he was with his individual output, Partington said levelling the Royals’ ledger to 5-5 was the best outcome of the day.

After dropping the first five games of the year, East Perth is now only 15 percentage points away from claiming a coveted top five spot on the WAFL ladder.

He said the Royals’ sole focus ahead of the match was winning contested possession count.

“Whoever wins the contested footy generally win the game, so we went in with that focus this week,” Partington said.

“It was nice to get the win. West Perth are a quality side. Ahead of this week, they were 6-2, so we knew it was going to be a really big challenge.

“The way we have been going, winning five in a row now, we’ve been travelling really well. We knew that we were good enough to get the job done and we went out there and showed it.

“We played as a team and we worked really well together. We worked to the game plan we wanted; we were predictable and we got the result.

“In the coming weeks, after the bye next week, that’s what we’ve got to keep on doing. We need to keep being predictable and play team footy.”