SYDNEY coach Paul Roos believes next Sunday's clash with Port Adelaide will determine whether his team can work hard and find form or whether some of them have just given up.

After suffering a 26-point loss to St Kilda at the weekend, their second successive defeat, Sydney are 11th on the ladder and are 3-4. While he won't be making changes, Roos said there were signs he would be looking for.

"If you said there were five or six players out of form, you are certainly not going to drop five at one time," Roos said. "What you will do is look within the confines of the team structure and who is playing well in the seconds and of the players who may be out of form, how much credit they do have. All those sorts of things.

"What I'm saying is we might make a change this week, I'm not sure, but more it's a case-by-case thing, rather than a blanket thing. We'd certainly like to be better than 3-4 but it's certainly not panic stations yet. At the moment, we've probably just got a few too many guys who aren't playing well enough to be able to win games of footy.

"As a coach, when you are getting into your fourth year and it's the same voice … there is always a concern that players can switch off. That's the thing we've got to watch as coaches, [to] make sure it doesn't become, 'Oh well. I'll turn it on this week', or, 'It will be fine'. They are the signs we are looking for and we'll address them if they happen.

"I haven't seen that. It's two games [losses] and this week is a critical game to see where we are at in terms of those [out-of-form] players, whether they can bounce back or whether it's more of a mental thing of, 'It's a bit too hard now', and, 'We've had some success and I'm not prepared to pay the price'.

"But, at this stage, I don't think that's the case. There is a certain amount of credits in the bank with what we have been able to do and they've always been able to respond [in the past]. But at some point you do have to make changes and you've got to be aware that at some point some players might struggle and other players might come over the top of them."

Sydney co-captain Leo Barry said the Swans were "pretty ordinary" against the Saints and although two of their three wins have been against the bottom sides, Richmond and Melbourne, he believes they can play their way out of the rut.

"It's almost Groundhog Day. We've had a lot of meetings and discussions over the last couple of weeks, and it's just back to the drawing board and continually working on the areas we need to improve on," Barry said.

"We have to get back to doing the team stuff we know gives us that competitive edge against other teams which we know has gone missing over the last three or four weeks.

"There's going to be concern with the way we're playing but we'll keep reinforcing we've been here before, and what got us out of the rut was all the hard work and the way we're able to galvanise as a team. The pressure is on us again, but hopefully we turn up to play next week.

"I think we'll make changes if they have to be made. Gone are the days where you keep continually playing blokes, and something we have always shown is if someone is struggling with form it might be best for the team to go back into reserves.

"But there won't be any major changes, and it's certainly not panic stations in regards to selection."

Barry added that one problem, which Sydney have had in the past, is a tendency for players to start playing for themselves instead of the team, and that may be the case again "with a few blokes worried about their own performances and worried about getting a kick and not thinking about team structures and the stuff which helps us be a really good team".

He admitted that a few players are down on form and need to get back to training hard to regain "that bit of a spark".

His coach agreed that hard training was the answer in a form slump.

"And it's those times when often the coaches can't help you, it's up to the individuals to get back to the way they know they can play, get back to their strengths, play to their strengths and do a bit extra during the week," Roos said. "There's no good waiting for it to happen, you've got to make it happen by doing something differently. Understand what your strengths are, play to them and train hard and do everything you possibly can during the week."

Saturday's match was marred by a knee injury to Saints utility Brendon Goddard. Scans yesterday showed he had a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament and would need a reconstruction.