Sydney coach Paul Roos is wondering how much more he can squeeze out of the club's ageing warriors before their AFL season-opener against St Kilda on Saturday.

Injuries to several youngsters have forced Roos to rely heavily on his senior players with former Collingwood player Rhyce Shaw the only fresh face for the Swans in the Etihad Stadium clash.

While Roos was always resigned to his veteran bookends, Leo Barry (knee) and full forward Michael O'Loughlin (ankle) missing the opening rounds because of long-term injuries, his plans to give younger players a run have been stymied.

While the likes of Barry Hall, Brett Kirk, Adam Goodes and Jared Crouch all raring to go, Roos noted Sydney had more fitness issues with their younger brigade.

"Unfortunately a few of our younger players are injured, it's funny how the older guys seem to be more resilient at this time of year," Roos said.

"Matthew Laidlaw (22-years-old, one senior game), Nick Smith (20, two), Tim Schmidt (23, 17) and Patrick Veszpremi (19, six), guys that we were probably looking to play at this time of the year are injured.

"It's almost first come best served and the older blokes have sort of stood up."

Roos said the health of his senior players was his greatest cause for optimism but the big unknown factor was how big a toll six successive seasons of finals football had taken.

"When you do have guys that have played and are battled tested and maybe even in a sense battle weary after six finals campaigns, some of them can drop off fairly quickly," Roos said.

"I think that's probably the unknown with our team, is how many of them will be able to hang on and how long for.

"By that, I don't even mean necessarily the 32, 33-year-olds.

"We've seen Tadhg Kennelly at 27 decide to go back to Ireland because of his body. We've seen Nic Fosdike at 28 decide that he can't go on because of his knee and it's not unique to us.

"It happened with Port with Roger James and with Josh Francou and it happened with Michael Voss and Justin Leppitsch and those guys up in Brisbane and we've already seen it a little bit (at) West Coast as well."

Recruit Shaw was listed on the half back line.

With O'Loughlin still recovering, Hall was named at full forward and Ted Richards at centre half forward.

Roos said at present it was hard to see any team breaking the Hawthorn-Geelong duopoly.

"But history tells you if you look at Essendon when they won in 2000, everyone said they were going into an era of dominance and they didn't win it again," Roos said.

"Everyone talked about West Coast going into an era of dominance (but) they lost Chris Judd and Ben Cousins and last year they finished second bottom."

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