Critics have labelled them old, slow and in desperate need of new blood, but Sydney coach Paul Roos has stood by his decision to recruit only three young players in the national draft.

Having already landed Collingwood outcast Rhyce Shaw using an exchange of mid-draft picks during trade week, the Swans proceeded to pick up Lewis Johnston (pick 12), Daniel Hannebery (30) and Campbell Heath (61) last Saturday.

That surprised many observers, who expected the ageing Swans to prune their list with a firmer hand and inject at least four - and up to six - new players from the last "uncompromised" draft before the new Gold Coast club takes advantage of their draft monopoly for the next few years.

Speaking after a training session at Gosford, Roos bucked the AFL's trend of worshipping the fountain of youth, maintaining the progress made by his existing juniors meant there wasn't an overriding need to bring in new players. "I think you can tend to have too many sometimes. The reality is in a footy team is that you can only play 22 players, so if you've got 15 kids on the list, it's unlikely they're going to play anyway, so we don't take kids just for the sake of it," Roos said yesterday.

"But we took three [draftees] last year, we elevated a couple of rookies, Tim Schmidt and Matty O'Dwyer, we had six kids playing their first game last year and now we've added another three, so we were starting to become a lot younger."

While the Swans have enjoyed some success from the rookie list in recent times, and Roos will ask recruiting manager Stuart Maxfield to see if there are any worthwhile leftovers, he's also unlikely to dip too far into the rookie draft on December 16.

"I'm not sure, again you don't want to take kids or rookies just for the sake of it, you've got to be pretty sure they're going to play AFL football because it's an expensive exercise developing kids, and you can tend to waste money," Roos said.

"We'll now sit back and have a look at what's available, obviously Stuey and the boys will give us a report on who missed out on the draft and whether [they're] worthwhile taking.

"I think we've got another two rookies spots and NSW [spots], so we'll analyse that now and make a decision closer to that date."

Roos admitted his recruiting motives were strongly fuelled by the competitive Sydney marketplace and the perception the Swans can ill-afford to spend any time in doldrums.

"Particularly for us in this environment, we can balance it with experienced guys, younger guys, and we're probably never going to get to the stage of other teams where they fill up with all young kids because we can't afford to bottom out for two-three years," Roos said.

While the decision to recruit Shaw may be in keeping with theme of ready-made talent, it certainly raised some eyebrows given his history at Collingwood. However, Roos couldn't be happier with how the new recruit has settled in.

"He's a professional and he's at a stage in his career where he's 26-27 and knows what footy's all about," Roos said.