SYDNEY Swans coach Paul Roos says his focus remains on his side's season opener against St Kilda, despite the club recording its first NAB Cup win in eight years last weekend.

Not even the prospect of a dry run against the Saints at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night in round two of the NAB Cup can budge the Swans from their steely focus on the premiership season.

"Often in the NAB Cup or the NAB Challenge, you play teams that you come up against early in the season and very rarely do you show too much about your match-ups or what you do against the direct opposition, because you don't need to," Roos said before training on Thursday.

"We want to get ourselves right, (St Kilda coach) Rossy (Lyon) will want to get their team right and then round one will be a completely different game in a sense."

To that end, the Swans are set to play emerging forward Jesse White for at least a half against the Saints to blow out the pre-season cobwebs.

White has overcome an ankle complaint and will replace Craig Bird (foot stress fracture) in Saturday night's team.

Ruckman Shane Mumford and midfielder Ryan O'Keefe also come into the team, while defender Craig Bolton is unlikely to play despite being named in the squad and Trent Dennis-Lane will miss with a sore knee.

With the Swans' nominal full-forward Daniel Bradshaw still touch and go for round one, Roos said it was important for White to familiarise himself with his new teammates in a match situation.

"Obviously Mummy and Seabs will be coming through the middle of the ground and hopefully Joey (Josh Kennedy) and Benny McGlynn [too]," Roos said.

"If some of the young guys get a game, Jesse needs to know how the delivery is going to be from those players.

"It's probably less about Jesse and Goodesy working together because they will [do that], but it's more about the midfielders and the defenders … there's a fair bit of a change that Jesse has to get used to from last year."

Almost a week on, Roos remained impressed by the strong contributions from Dennis-Lane, Gary Rohan and Lewis Jetta and said that trio was firmly in the mix for a round one debut.

"Their names are still on the board. If they play well enough over the next three weeks, they should be there round one," he said.

"If you see Lewis and Gary play like they did last week, you go, 'Gee that's a really good effort'. You almost expect them to have a bit of a down week after such a big week and a good debut from both of them.

"But if they can come out and play well against St Kilda, it's going to be a really good effort because they're a quality side, they're hard at the footy and they're experienced."