THE SYDNEY Swans will miss the finals for the first time under Paul Roos after slipping to a 41-point loss at the hands of Collingwood on Sunday.

It's an unfamiliar position for Roos, but he's happy with the longer-term view the club took in the second half of the season.

"You always focus on finals because that's where you want to go, but six or seven weeks ago we put the focus on playing the young guys and making sure the balance of the team was right with enough young kids playing," Roos said.

"That continued today and it will continue next week and that's really what we want to get out of the rest of the season."

Youngster Nick Smith provided a reason for optimism, with his shutdown role on Magpie danger man Alan Didak drawing high praise. "Nick Smith's job on Alan Didak today was just outstanding," Roos said.

"He's probably in the top half-a-dozen players in the competition, so it was a bit of a gamble … but that's the benefit of playing against good opposition; you get a chance to test your young players.

"He was just outstanding and did as good a job as I've seen anyone do on Didak.

"That's a real positive then the other side of it is Jesse White. He played a shocker today and that's a positive as well because you can go into pre-season getting a bit ahead of yourself.

"He's had a lot of publicity and a lot of talk about him and we know he can play, but that's the other side of it. He struggled today and he'll learn from that."

The Swans were well in the contest in the first half, but faded badly in the second. Roos admitted his players looked tired later in the game which wasn't helped by the fact that Jarred Moore was taken to hospital after suffering a suspected punctured lung in a clash with Heath Shaw late in the second quarter.

"It was a good act, a courageous act and it almost turned the game our way, but as it turned out, it turned the game their way as much as anything," Roos said of the knock on that set up a Paul Bevan goal.

"Once he was off it made it pretty hard for us."

But the coach wasn’t about to let his players hide behind being one down on the bench.

"Today we just slaughtered the footy; we couldn't move the ball," he said.

"We didn't give ourselves an opportunity. Even when we were up and going a bit earlier our ball use was just deplorable."

Tarkyn Lockyer booted a goal from an interchange infringement just before the end of the match and Roos was captured by television cameras remonstrating with the AFL interchange steward involved.

"I thought a guy came off and a guy went on; that's what I saw. He clearly saw it differently and I let him know," Roos, who coached from the bench, said.

"Our bench was surprised, the feedback we got from Collingwood on the way off was that they didn't see anything wrong with what had happened. I was standing right there and Nick Smith came off and Heath Grundy went on."

Roos agreed the incident had no bearing on the match, but expressed his hope that such a situation would not affect a much closer game in the future.