WE SAW Israel Folau produce a touch of AFL magic on Wednesday night with his high-flying mark and try, now Sydney coach Paul Roos is hoping his team can use some league skills to bring to an end the recent domination Collingwood has had over his club.

It's no big secret, and Roos again admitted yesterday they "unashamedly have tapped into rugby union and league with our tackling". But he conceded tackling was the main area his team needed to do well to end Collingwood's four-game winning run against them, when they meet at ANZ Stadium tomorrow night.

Sydney's season was ended in the finals last year by the Magpies, just a couple of weeks after Collingwood had also soundly beaten the Swans in round 21. On both occasions the Pies out-tackled Sydney, 67-52 in round 21, then a massive 68-37 in the elimination final.

"I think we got out-tackled in those games and that's something we need to be able to address, we need to be able to tackle," Roos said last night. "Tackling has always been a big part of the game and it's probably come onto the agenda since Collingwood had 80-something tackles [85 in their big win] against Geelong.

"Tackling has always been a benchmark of the Brisbane teams that won three [premierships] in a row and certainly of our team [in 2005] and I suspect West Coast [2006] and Geelong [2007]. The team that tackles really well, generally between Collingwood and Sydney, has been the team that has won and they out-tackled us really well last year and that's a mindset thing, and our guys need to come with a mindset to compete really, really hard.

"It [tackling] is something we talk about on a weekly basis but going into the game we are aware of the stats in the last three games and I think in that final they almost doubled us in tackles, and if they do that again they will win, end of story, regardless of whatever happens at either end of the ground or in any other statistics. If they smash us at the tackles, they will beat us."

While the thought of revenge for ending their season may be on the minds of some of the players, it's not something Roos has used to motivate his team this week.

"I think the players are aware of it because we got beaten and our season finished because of Collingwood, but there is nothing you can do about that game," Roos said. "I think they were a team on the way up and we were a team that, clearly based on ladder positions, were on the way down.

"I probably had them, with all due respects to Port, as the second-best team last year. They were, along with Geelong, the best teams that we played. They were very, very good last year and they played really good footy against us. What happens on Saturday night will have no bearing on what happened last year."

Roos made just one change to the team that defeated Melbourne two weeks ago, with Peter Everitt returning after two weeks out with a hamstring injury, to replace the suspended Adam Goodes. It will be the first time in his 145-game coaching career Roos will be without Goodes, but he said he has not worried about the dual Brownlow Medal winner being on the sidelines.

"Goodesy is such an important player for us, but you can't talk too much about him when he's not here, you've got to focus on the guys that are here," he said. "Obviously we are going to miss him because he's one of our few blokes who has played really good footy against Collingwood … but, he's not there, that's the reality, so we just have to find a way to cover for him."