He showed his continued progression over summer with 16 quality disposals against the Swans in the Saints' eight-point win at ANZ Stadium.
Ray said his footballing philosophy revolved around doing the hard stuff to make the pretty things look easy.
"Personally I’m striving to get to Joey (Leigh Montagna), Dal (Nick Dal Santo) and Lenny Hayes’ standard. How far I’ve come is mountains, but I still have mountains to go," said Ray.
The 2009 grand finalists will strive to go one better in 2010 and despite the heartbreak of last year, Ray insisted the Saints haven't changed their focus on doing tough things right.
"That’s what we base our game on - our pressure skills, we try to really set the standard. That’s all we try to do each week, to be the number one tackling team and hardest at the ball each week and if we do that then the pretty modern day football comes afterwards," he said.
There was no question the Saints hung tough with the Swans at ANZ Stadium and Ray wouldn’t have wanted to start the season any other way.
"It’s good to have a tough match and I think we had a tough match in the NAB Cup grand final against the Bulldogs, it was probably a good lead in game," he said.
"We played Sydney this time last year and it was a tough game too. I think you need those hard bodies to get you right for the season."
Still, there was room for improvement in what was an exciting but sometimes scrappy game, where plenty of targets were missed.
"Definitely there is always going to be improvement, and we could have done better, but we came up here to get the four points and did," Ray said.
The Saints led by more than three goals at the start of the final term before the Swans cut the margin to less than a kick and Ray had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek as he reflected on the final term.
"Well, we just wanted to make it exciting for the fans," he said with a laugh.
"No, we were 20 points up and then quickly it was two. Sometimes we make things hard for ourselves, but we got the job done in the end."
