Sydney co-captain Craig Bolton has called for the Swans to lift their intensity after they received a nasty wake-up call from Collingwood on Saturday night.

The Magpies' 29-point triumph at ANZ Stadium represented Sydney's first loss in seven games and prevented them establishing an almost unbreakable grip on fourth place on the AFL ladder.

A win on Saturday would have lifted Sydney 10 points clear of Collingwood and within six points of Hawthorn.

The Swans face a tough run home after five of their six straight wins were achieved against teams presently in the bottom six of the ladder.

Sydney play three of the other top six teams over the next four weeks, facing Hawthorn, Adelaide and Western Bulldogs, with the Crows clash the only one of those matches at home.

"We are still finding out what this group is capable of doing and we'll find out over the next eight weeks," Sydney coach Paul Roos said.

While Adam Goodes will return from suspension next week, Sydney will wait to see whether the AFL will act on forward Barry Hall's apparent right-arm swing at Magpies defender Shane Wakelin.

Swans defender Bolton was non-committal about that incident, but said he couldn't think of a better way for the Swans to bounce back from the defeat than a win over the high-flying Hawks on Sunday at the MCG.

"These sorts of games you've got to win," said Bolton, who won All-Australian selection in 2006.

"Last night was an example of that finals sort of footy and you want to be playing well in those games. We didn't last night, so we've got a good chance to account for that this week.

"I think going into the back end of the season we've got some really tough encounters like last night coming up and it's good preparation for the finals.

"There's no point winning the easy sort of games if you can't win the really tough finals type games of football.

"It was a good opportunity for us last night and we threw it away, but we've got another one this weekend.

"They (Collingwood) are a good side and we're going to come up against a lot of sides like that in the future, so we've really got to lift our intensity if we want to be competitive against sides like that.

"We have been in good form, so while it is a wake-up call for us and I guess it means we've got a lot of areas to improve on, we've still got a lot of good footy behind us and a lot of confidence gained from that part of the season."

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