HAVING made his name as an athletic half-back with an incisive left foot, Nick Malceski was as surprised as anyone when the call came to play forward against Hawthorn on Saturday night.

But it reaped considerable rewards, individually and for the team, as Malceski finished with three goals in the Swans' 38-point win at ANZ Stadium.

"I had no idea. I didn’t even know going into the game that I was going to be playing up forward," he said.

"Hopefully I’ll get a crack up forward again this week.

"I might go and see the forwards coach, John Blakey, and see if I can have a crack up there. But I don’t really mind. I’ll play anywhere."

But Malceski laughed off a suggestion that he might step into the full-forward post for Saturday night's clash with the Lions if regular spearhead Barry Hall failed to recover from a groin strain.

On a more serious note, Malceski said the key to the Swans’ victory over the Hawks was the resurrection of their trademark run and carry from half-back.

"Going into the game, we really wanted to get some run from defence and we did bring that in Rhyce Shaw and Marty (Mattner)," he said.

"And Craig Bolton ran off (Lance) Franklin, and Lewis Roberts-Thomson [did] as well.

"Everyone was running off down back and it made the ball flow a lot better than it did against St Kilda."

Malceski said the team had taken plenty of confidence from its performance against the Hawks, but the challenge was to replicate that effort against the Lions.

"There was a bit of hype in the rooms afterwards, but it’s only our first win for the year," he said.

"We’ve only played two games so we’ve just got to make sure we keep improving every game.

"They’ve got some good forwards in Jonathan Brown and (Daniel) Bradshaw up there so that’s two big jobs for our key defenders again. I guess we’ve just got to get that run going out of the backline to start us off."