SYDNEY Swans defender Martin Mattner admits his side has failed its recent tests and needs to lift to be considered a genuine premiership threat.

The Swans have lost their past two matches against fellow top-four aspirants Collingwood and Hawthorn, and Mattner, who joined the club this year, said the results had shown where Paul Roos’ team needed to improve.

“The last couple of weeks have probably shown us where we are,” Mattner said after Sunday’s 31-point loss at the MCG.

“We’ve probably hung around the top, sort of fourth, fifth, sixth spots, but to beat the top three sides we’re going to have to play a lot better.

“It’s probably shown the last couple of weeks we’re probably not quite there.”

The Swans are still fourth on the ladder and are focused on retaining the all-important double chance come finals time.

To do so, they must start winning matches – starting with their clash with Carlton at Telstra Dome on Sunday.

“Carlton’s a big game for us,” Mattner said.

“We’ve got to win that to keep touch on the top three and also keep our spot on the top four.

“We probably haven’t quite hit the mark the last couple of weeks … but if we can win that [next week] we’ll keep a little gap on Collingwood too [and] that’d be great.”

Mattner said the difference between being a finals side and a genuine title contender was effort. He said the Swans had been in matches for long periods against Geelong this year as well as Sunday’s loss to Hawthorn but had dropped off in crucial stages.

“I think it’s consistency and playing four good quarters,” he said.

“If we can do that against top sides, we’ll give ourselves a chance and I think we’ll play a lot better footy and we’ll win a lot of those games too.”

Hawthorn booted six goals to two in the second quarter, which proved the Swans’ undoing, with Mattner believing skill errors were what ruined his team’s chances of victory.

“We seemed to have a lot of the footy but we just turned it over a bit too easily, which gave them some easy goals,” he said.

“That kills you when you turn the ball over through half-back and through the midfield, and especially with a team like Hawthorn, they’ll punish you going back the other way.”