DESPITE a two-point defeat at the hands of the Saints, Sydney Swans coach Paul Roos says he's still pleased with the endeavour of his side.

The Swans were outscored four goals to one in the first quarter and trailed by 20 points early on but clawed back to level the scores at the main break, setting the game up for a dramatic finish.

“There were a lot of positives in the second, third and fourth quarters with new players coming into the team so we were reasonably pleased in the end, as pleased as you can be with losing a game of footy and understanding it is round one and we’ve got a lot of improvement to get to where we want to get to,” Roos said.

Although he acknowledged dual Brownlow medalist Adam Goodes was below par, he said he will take positives from the performance of Barry Hall, who is back from an injury interrupted 2007.

“You’re not going to see Goodesy play that poorly probably (again) and you’ve got to give Leigh Fisher credit where credit’s due, I think he did a really good job,” he said.

“Hally showed a few good signs he’s probably just a bit out of touch, he hasn’t played a lot of footy.

“He certainly looked significantly sharper and he led well. Unfortunately our ball use to him on a couple of occasions really hurt us as well as him but physically he looked a lot better than last year which is important.”

Roos spent the game at ground level just behind the interchange bench and says he plans to spend less time in the coaching box this season.

“Either myself or John Longmire will persevere with that. I think that particularly when it’s close at the end it’s a lot easier to work out your match ups and see who looks fresh and who doesn’t look fresh, so it’s something we worked at in the off-season and something I think will work well,” he said.

“There’s so much preparation that goes on during the week and there’s so much communication between players and coaches and then all of a sudden you get to game day and there’s no communication between players and coaches so we’re just trying to bridge that gap a little bit… to get the messages through to players directly rather than go through a second or third party.”

And he insisted that there weren’t instances of players getting a spray, despite him being face-to-face with them as they came off the field rather than being at the end of the phone line.

“That’s one thing you’ve got to try not to do,” he said.

“I think I was reasonably calm down there.”