AT HALF-TIME on Saturday night with Sydney bumbling their way along against North Melbourne, their season looking anything but like it would be extended by another week, Paul Roos produced a guarantee. It wasn't the first time he's used the line, and many of his gathered players would recall the last time.

Rewind to 2005, grand final day and the Swans' coach said: "I gave them a guarantee and that's something I don't normally do, that if they give their maximum effort for two hours they would win a premiership."

With their season on the line on Saturday, Roos decided it was time for another one.

"Roosy felt some of us were going a bit half-paced at half-time and he said he could guarantee if we all got on board and played at 100 per cent that we would walk away with a win," Jude Bolton said. "We lifted our intensity and workrate and it opened up for us."

Just two weeks ago after the team was soundly beaten by Collingwood, Roos declared the team was nearing the end of an era and were "just not capable of producing the performances that they once were".

Since then they belted the Brisbane Lions, then showed in the second half of Saturday's game that maybe they still have enough left to do some damage in September.

"It was round 21 and still plenty of footy was left, and there's still plenty of footy left in this team," Brett Kirk said.

"There was a real synergy in that third quarter. I could really feel it pumping through me."

Bolton, his midfield partner, concurred. At 28, he said he felt the older players in the team had something to prove.

"There's been a fair bit of criticism of our guys and that criticism is probably due," Bolton said.

"But we believe we've still got plenty to offer and the experience our guys have had in previous finals stood up [on Saturday]."

Many expected the Swans to be bounced out in the opening week of the finals again this season. As the case has been so often the past, they had been written off in many sectors.

When asked about surprising those who had discarded them, Jarrad McVeigh said: "Who cares? See what Geelong are doing? They are hard at the footy, they tackle hard, they move the ball quick … it still works, for us or any other team.

"We are a good team, we're just re-affirming the things we do well. We want to go all the way."

Added Ryan O'Keefe: "It's all about momentum and confidence and if we play like we did in that second half, we can give it a real shake again."