RICHMOND coach Damien Hardwick is confident the Tigers have given themselves the best possible chance to avoid the bye week blues and come away from Sydney on Sunday with a win.

So far this season only Geelong and Hawthorn have won the week after a break unless two teams that both had byes the previous week played each other.

It's a trend that doesn't bode well for Richmond as it looks to rebound after a disappointing loss to Port Adelaide before the club's bye, but Hardwick says the Tigers have worked hard to avoid becoming another statistic.

"The recent win-loss records of certain sides [following the bye] hasn't been great, but we came in with a strategy and we stuck with what we needed to do," Hardwick said from Punt Road Oval ahead of Thursday's training session.

"We just went about our training as per normal. We gave the players a couple of days off then came back, reviewed the game [against the Power in Darwin] and went from there.

"We had a couple of reasonably solid sessions last week, but this week we've just gone about our training as a normal week so hopefully that reaps dividends on Sunday.

"We had the schedule from early in the year and it was always part of our plans to go about it this way."

Hardwick noted after the loss to Port that having two weeks to mull over the sub-par performance wasn't ideal, but he's confident the lacklustre display isn't a sign of things to come.

"We went through that to a fair degree over the course of last week and a little bit this week as well, but in the last six weeks we're 4-2 so you're going to have a blip on the radar at some stage," he said.

"We were disappointing, there's no doubt about that, but the guys and the coaching staff looked at it and felt we've got to build in a number of areas to get better.

"The great thing about it is, it's a great test of our resilience this week to have another 'away' trip against a good quality side [in the Swans].
 
"The easy thing would have been for us to play in Melbourne, but we have another opportunity to get better this week versus Sydney up there which will be a great game for us to have a crack at."

Shane Edwards, who fractured a cheekbone in the round eight loss to the Western Bulldogs, has been named on an extended bench for the clash along with fellow inclusions Tom Hislop, who was elevated off the rookie list this week, Jeromey Webberley and David Astbury.

Brad Helbig was the only omission on Thursday.