Roos admitted that while making the finals was still his top priority, the club now had to think long and hard about fast-tracking the younger players on the list - something the Swans have been accused of not doing enough of in recent times. "It's nice to play finals, but if we play finals this year, it would be good to play them in good form," Roos said. "If you limp into them, you've probably got to determine if then to play Kieran Jack and Patrick Veszpremi, and at least you'd get some experience for those young players.

"If we don't make the eight but we blood some young kids, that's a positive. If we make the eight and we haven't blooded any kids and you're finished in the first week of the finals, what's better?

"I think every team sets out to make the eight at the start of the year and we're still in the mix, so that's a really important factor at this time of year. I'd certainly rather be playing in games that actually have a degree of pressure, the young kids playing in them are learning something."

Unfortunately for Sydney, Collingwood appear to have established a mental stranglehold over the Swans, winning the past five clashes between the clubs.

Should the Swans manage to steal an unlikely victory, they will move six points clear of the Magpies, remain in the hunt for a top-four berth and be assured of a spot in September. A loss could easily see them slip to eighth, leaving a sudden-death encounter against ninth-placed Brisbane at the SCG in round 22.

"Every team has struggled against Geelong because they're such a good team and we'll try and put that one behind us as quick as we can, but we need to play a lot better against Collingwood," Roos said.

"We've struggled against Collingwood in the past. They really get up for our games."

"They know we play contested footy and they've got a similar type of structure. They've got some really hard in-and-under midfielders like [Scott] Burns and [Shane] O'Bree and guys like that, so they tend to match up pretty well against us."

Roos said the Swans must erase clangers from their game if they are to have any chance of salvaging something from the season. "I think there's a lot of errors we need to address based from the weekend's game. The first thing about footy is that you've got to win the ball and the second thing is if you haven't got the ball, you've got to try and get it back quickly off the opposition," he said.

"They're key areas no matter who you play and I think that's the one consistent thing in football, the teams who do that consistently during the game [play well]."