Sydney are bothered, but not broken, by their form lapse ahead of the AFL finals.

Saturday’s 34-point loss to Geelong cost the Swans a home qualifying final and meant they head into September with one win from their past four matches.

Sydney have also beaten the Crows only twice in their past 10 meetings at AAMI Stadium.

But coach John Longmire noted his team went down to Collingwood by eight points in round 20 and lost a cracking match to Hawthorn a week ago by just seven points.

They also were without key forward Sam Reid (gluteal) and Nick Smith (hamstring) for the Geelong match and they should return for next weekend’s away final against Adelaide.

“I understand how everyone looks at the win-loss – that’s obviously as a footy team what you get judged by,” Longmire said.

“But the losses against Collingwood and Hawthorn, we thought we actually played some pretty positive footy in that.

“Not every win, you play super well and not every loss, nothing goes (totally) wrong.

“Today, I thought we played some pretty good footy for probably two and a bit quarters.

“A good team like Geelong are able to kick away when they get the opportunity.”

Longmire bemoaned their ball use, saying the Swans were too stagnant and were not adventurous enough.

He said that was a big reason why the inside-50 count was a whopping 71-41 in Geelong’s favour.

Another major concern was contested ball, normally the bedrock of Sydney’s game.

They led that count by one at halftime, but Geelong ramped up their intensity around the stoppages in the second half and won the statistic by 20.

Despite their obvious problems against Geelong, the Swans still see themselves as major players this September.

“We’ve done a lot of work this year to give ourselves an opportunity to play in the top four,” Longmire said.

“If someone had asked me at the start of the year ‘if you finished top four, would you take it?’, most people would probably tend to agree we would have taken it.

“We think if we get back to playing the footy we played just last week, that will take some beating.