JARRAD McVeigh says the Swans need to improve their disposal efficiency if they’re going to beat the best teams in the competition.

While the Swans found plenty of the football in Saturday night's 27-point loss to Geelong at the SCG (collecting 322 disposals to the Cats' 330), they repeatedly missed their targets by hand and foot.

Conditions were terrible, but Geelong's three highest possession earners - Paul Chapman, Steve Johnson and Matthew Scarlett - had an average effective-disposal percentage of 76.

In contrast, the Swans' top three in Josh Kennedy, Rhyce Shaw and Kieren Jack managed to hit their targets on average only 63 per cent of the time.

"There were a few 50-50 contests that we were all a part of that we didn't win and again our ball use was terrible," McVeigh said after the match. 

"We got away with it in the last couple of weeks but against a really good team like Geelong you can't afford to keep kicking it back to Scarlett and those guys.

"We’re really disappointed, we really set ourselves for this game against a quality team and they were too good for us.

"They played a full four-quarter effort and we didn't."

The Swans will have an extra week on the training track with next weekend's bye before they play Carlton in their first Friday night game since 2003.

"We've got a lot to improve and a lot to work on," McVeigh said.

"We've got the bye now so we've got a couple of weeks to do that. We're all in it together and we've all got to improve.

"The signs are good and we are improving but those are the games that you want to play well in against really good teams."

Swans coach John Longmire said the bye will provide the team with the chance to fine-tune a few areas of their game after the opening four rounds of the season.

"I think the bye has come at a good time in terms of working on some things that we need to work on and getting a few blokes who have a few bumps and bruises ready to go," Longmire said.

"[In the first four rounds] we've had a pretty intense run, there have been some pretty tough games, hard physical games but I think our endeavour has been really good."