The Gold Coast Suns are counting the cost of their heavy 70-point defeat to Sydney on Saturday night with a knee injury to their superstar captain, Gary Ablett.

The Brownlow medallist twisted his knee and suffered damage to his medial ligament in the first quarter of his side's 15.16 (106) to 4.12 (36) loss at Metricon Stadium.

He attempted an unsuccessful comeback as a forward in the second quarter but coach Guy McKenna gave him an early shower and will be sweating on the results of scans on his knee scheduled for Monday.

It was always unlikely the Suns would taste victory against the more mature, battle-hardened Swans - but without Ablett, their million- dollar marquee man, they were fighting an uphill battle.

In tandem with most pre-game predictions, Sydney booted the first three goals of the game and skipped ahead to a 22-point lead at the first change.

Wonderkid David Swallow kicked two quick goals in the second quarter to cut the margin back to 16 points but the Swans hit back with three late goals to close the door on the hosts.

An uninspiring third quarter saw just 1.8 kicked by both sides, that sole major kicked by evergreen veteran Adam Goodes as the youth of the Gold Coast looked all at sea without Ablett's leadership.

They managed to kick their fourth goal for the match through forward Tom Lynch early in the last quarter but a Swans victory was already assured by that stage - and confirmed with a further five goals for the term.

Inefficient with their forays forward, the Suns managed just four goals for the night from 39 entries into their attacking 50 metre arc.

Sydney had an eleventh-hour setback with the late withdrawal of Jude Bolton, who injured his knee in the warm-up and will have a scan on Monday to assess the damage.

A forlorn looking Ablett, accompanied by his brother Nathan, hobbled out of the stadium after the match wearing a knee brace on his right leg.

But McKenna said the fact that Ablett was able to try to run off the injury - while unsuccessfully - showed that it wasn't as bad as first feared.

"We think structurally it's better than expected but he certainly didn't feel too comfortable on it," McKenna said.

"Life goes on - but it's going to be a lot tougher of course."

Even if Ablett escaped injury and played out the game to his magnificent best, McKenna said it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to the final result.

"Not too many blokes put their hand up today," he said.

"Gaz wasn't the difference between a 70-point loss or not.

"I could have told (the players at halftime) that Gaz went off, his father went off, gotten some cattle prods and given them a jolt ... I don't think it would have mattered a great deal."

Sydney coach John Longmire said that Ablett's injury allowed him the luxury of being able to change his structure - freeing up tagger Ben McGlynn - and ultimately assured them victory.

"I thought Benny was OK on him for the first 10 or 15 minutes but Gary's impact on games that he can have goes without saying," Longmire said.

"We changed our structure a little bit and once we knew that Gary wasn't going to come back on it meant that Benny could be used in other roles."

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