Renowned for his laidback demeanour and dry wit, the rare sighting of a furious Paul Roos was seen at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night berating some of his Swans defenders during their opening-round loss to St Kilda.

While Sydney showed plenty of promise in an entertaining eight-point loss to last year's runners-up, at three quarter-time Roos took exception to some of his side's ordinary defending.

The Swans had said in the lead-up to the season they wanted to regain the tag of the league's most frugal defensive unit, something the Saints had earned in recent years.

Leo Barry has retired, but Tadhg Kennelly has returned from Ireland to join the likes of Craig Bolton, Marty Mattner, Nick Malceski, Lewis Roberts-Thomson, Rhyce Shaw and Heath Grundy in the Sydney back half.

But it still needs plenty of work judging on Saturday night's performance.

Grundy and Roberts-Thomson were out-duelled by Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke, while poor defensive turnovers and mis-judged marking attempts were all-too common for the home side.

They were also guilty of a lack of pressure when the ball was in dispute, leading to a raft of St Kilda majors kicked from inside the goal square.

It was a key factor in the Saints kicking a perfect nine straight goals to halftime en route to their 15.6 (96) to 13.10 (88) win.

"Where they got their goals, it was probably a world record. I think they'd kicked (nine) straight and those (nine) goals were a combined total of 36 yards," Roos said.

"If you go back over the annuls of the history of the game it was probably the shortest distance covered for (nine) goals in the history of football.

"So I did let them know that it probably wasn't that flash." Most pundits felt St Kilda's tall targets outplayed their opponents, but not Roos, who left regular fullback Craig Bolton on goalsneak Stephen Milne throughout the contest.

He was encouraged by Grundy, who is clearly going to get some big challenges this season.

"I thought Reg (Grundy) played a super game. Riewoldt's a terrific player but I thought that was a really good battle," he said.

"Milne's a good player as well and we've got to give Reg more opportunity now.

"Craig's closer to the end of his career than the start so we need someone to play on those players post-Craig and (Roberts-Thomson) was probably solid.

"But some of the easy goals our defenders let through at times, they'd be really disappointed in themselves as well." Overall, despite his brief rush of blood, Roos saw enough to be encouraged about the season ahead.

"Some of the turnovers in the back half hurt us a bit and that's going to happen as guys get used to playing with each other.

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