SYDNEY Swans coach Paul Roos said his side's 23-point loss to Collingwood on Saturday night highlighted "the enormous chasm" between the two teams' levels of class.

The Swans trailed by three points at the final change but they squandered a number of chances to take the lead early in the last quarter.

Leon Davis booted three goals in the final term and Alan Didak added another to cap a best-afield performance as Collingwood swamped the home side.

A disappointed Roos said the Swans simply didn't get reward for their efforts.

"The class of Collingwood was just better than the workmanlike performance of the Swans and that was the difference in the game, really," he said.

"[We made] far too many errors to beat a quality, class team. Teddy [Richards] handed them a goal at the end of the third quarter – you just can't win games of footy like that.

"We had blokes who had a lot of the footy but might as well not have had a lot of the footy. Their effort was super but the execution was just poor."

However, Roos was reluctant to pass judgement on his side when asked if it lacked enough elite talent and class to compete with the league's best.

"There are guys who didn't use the ball well tonight who are normally better than that so you hope their performance will lift," he said.

"We certainly had enough possession and enough of the footy, but just the chasm was enormous between when they had the ball and when we had the ball.

"Whether we had just a shocker with the ball tonight or whether that's an indication of where we are, that will be determined over the next 10 weeks."

Roos praised the courage of midfielder Jarrad McVeigh, who injured his shoulder in the first quarter but carried the knock through the rest of the game.

But he was less pleased with the output of McVeigh's fellow on-baller Jared Crouch, who laboured through the game with a knee injury despite declaring himself fit on Thursday night. 

"Crouchy probably shouldn't have played," Roos said.

"It's probably disappointing from his point of view that he put his hand up and said he was okay to go but clearly the whole game, he went around with a wooden leg and that really hurt us in the end.

"He only trained for 20 minutes [on Thursday] night and he said he was fine but he didn't look fine to me tonight."

"Most of those senior players, you go by what they say and their word and generally they back up their performance … he certainly was confident going into the game but clearly he wasn't able to do the things we asked of him."