Sydney coach John Longmire says that the nature of Friday's season-ending finals loss to Hawthorn is a strong indication that while his team has improved significantly in 2011, that they need to continue that improvement if they are to be premiership contenders next year.
While a sixth-place finish would be pleasing to a coach who lost his full back (Craig Bolton) and full forward (Daniel Bradshaw) to retirement early in the year and had to rely on the development of his youngsters more than he would had initially envisaged, the manner is which the Swans were bundled out of contention on Friday left a short-term sour taste in the mouth.
"You just can't give good teams who have won 18 games for the year a 40-point start at half-time," he said of the match, which saw the Swans blown out of the water early, only to close within three goals at the final change before being beaten by 36 points.
"We showed enormous character to get back in the game in the third quarter, but we hadn't done it early enough and we had to exert too much energy in that third quarter and it wasn't enough."
Longmire is satisfied that his first season in charge has seen the Swans' list improve as a whole, but he needs to see more development over the off-season and next year.
"The improvement from our list this year was pretty good over the year. I thought a lot of our player improved. Whether they were younger players, right through to the bloke who played his 300th tonight (Adam Goodes)."
"I thought there was a general improvement across the list and I think the only thing that is highlighted tonight is that we need to keep on improving."
Longmire said improving the list in terms of the personnel won't be an easy task given the fact this year's draft will be heavily compromised by the involvement of Greater Western Sydney.
"It's very difficult to do that in this window at the moment, last year and this year. You can't just go out there and get high draft picks and bring them into your team," he said.
"You have to be creative and essentially improve the players you have on your list."
Sydney have been extraordinary successful at developing 'second-hand' players from other clubs into key players in their team in recent years.
On Friday, Josh Kennedy, a former Hawk, was their best player, while Rhyce Shaw, Shane Mumford and Ben McGlynn have all come through intelligent trades under the previous Paul Roos era.
But Longmire was unsure how much of a role the Swans would play in trade week this year, saying there was a focus on developing younger talent.
"We haven't sat down as assessed the list to be honest," he said. "In the coming days we will look at where our list sits."
"We'll get (father-son selection) Tommy Mitchell in this year, which is fantastic. Last year we got Jed Lamb at pick 21, who we think is a good player and hasn't played any footy this year."
"We got Luke Parker at 40 and Alex Johnston at 57 and no one would have thought those boys would have played as much football as they did this year."