Just a day after defender Tadhg Kennelly broke the silence about the meeting Roos had with the leadership group following their disappointing performance against Collingwood on August 23 - their sixth loss in eight games - the coach spoke about how he had to take back a lot of the responsibility to allow the players to worry only about football.

"You read the group from time to time and I think they were struggling for answers. I read a couple of their articles in the paper and I sensed the mood within the group and really then you've just got to take charge as a leader," Roos said. "I just said to them, 'Boys, just worry about he footy. If you guys can play well as a group, then everything else will look after itself'. I said, 'Just let us worry about training and meetings and all those sorts of things and you guys just focus on the things you do best.'

"Sometimes with your leadership programs, they are terrific off the field, but I think you've got to make sure the balance does not go too far off-field and then you tend to forget what we're all actually here to do and that's win games of footy."

With Roos in charge, Sydney's leadership group has been given enormous responsibility and input into the way the Swans work. The coach was asked whether perhaps those players had been given too much power.

"I don't know whether you let them get too much power - that's not the right term - but probably they took too much responsibility on themselves and we had to wrest that back from them and say, 'Don't worry, we're here to help you, you just do what you do best and we'll look after everything else. If you lead by example on the field, we'll look after everything off the field'.

"This is the way we play our best footy, let's get back to that, and if we do that we're a chance to win, if we don't we're probably not going to win."

Sydney last night named the same 22 that beat North Melbourne last weekend, but Roos said Luke Ablett does have shoulder soreness so they have taken to Melbourne three emergencies - Craig Bird, Ryan Brabazon and Heath Grundy - in case Ablett is not passed fit to play.

Roos knows Sydney will need to "play as well as they possibly can" for four quarters tonight, but conceded even that may not be good enough.

"If the Bulldogs are up and going they are an extremely good side," Roos said. "Certainly the top three, the Bulldogs, Geelong and Hawthorn, it's possible to play really well against them and still not win, so our focus is more, let's try and play as well as we possibly can and not worry too much about the Bulldogs and if we play really, really well and they beat us, you just tip your hat and say, 'too good'."