In his fourth season at the Swans, defender Nick Smith just continues to get better.

In 2011, Smith lined up on the opposition’s best small forward for the majority of the year, and rarely had his colours lowered in a season where he only missed one game - the round 15 loss to Adelaide.

Some of Smith’s better performances were on All Australian livewire forward Stephen Milne (twice), Eddie Betts in round 13 and Steve Johnson in round 23.

Smith spoke to sydneyswans.com.au about his outstanding season and where he thinks the improvement can come in 2012.

Nick, how did you rate your season?

It was generally a pretty consistent year. I feel that it was a good thing that I got to play on some of the best players from the opposition each week. It gets you up for every game, because you know that if you’re not at your best you’re going to get smacked.

You had some great battles against St Kilda’s All Australian Stephen Milne and Carlton’s Eddie Betts. What was important in claiming those scalps?

Eddie definitely beat me in round 6 at the SCG, and I didn’t have a good game that night. It’s definitely pretty hard when you are getting beaten to turn things around, but you’ve just got to think about what you have to do. There’s no point worrying about what’s already happened because you can’t fix it. I really appreciated the faith Horse (John Longmire) showed in me to put me on him again in round 13, and it was good to be able to repay that faith, that is for sure.

I knew I had to play well to stop Milney. He’s a good player, and I knew that I had to play well at Etihad Stadium because he seems to be a better player at that ground. The boys definitely helped me out though. A lot of it comes down to how the ball is coming in and they did a good job of controlling his supply.

What were some of the highlights for you in a team sense?

It’s always good to win a final from a team point of view. We had a few other good wins in there as well. The North Melbourne win was really good, and winning in Perth against West Coast - who ended up in the top four - was also pretty good. Actually, winning at Geelong after the week we had was pretty significant. It was pretty special to win down there.

Who were some of your team-mates who impressed you in 2011?

Down back, Teddy Richards had an exceptional year and Goodesy’s last eight weeks were amazing. The young guys impressed me as well. Sammy Reid in his first full season of senior football was exceptional, and Luke Parker and Alex Johnson were really good too. It was also good to see Gary Rohan playing some quality footy towards the end of the year and I’m looking forward to him having a full pre-season and being able to play a lot more games next year.

Where do you think you and the team can improve to push on next season?

Personally, I think I can improve my fitness further and try and push to play in the midfield when I have to. Obviously with that will come a need to work on my skills. As a team we’ll work a lot on our skills over the pre-season and hopefully they can improve. 

We’ve got a lot of young players who we need to keep improving, and even the older guys need to improve as well. That all pretty much comes back to hard work and nothing will improve if we don’t do that work over the off-season.

What are your plans for the break?

I’m heading over to Europe with my sister - we’re going to Italy, France and Turkey. Besides that, I’ll probably spend a bit more time with my family down in Melbourne.

You can keep update to date with all of the Swans 2011 season wraps by clicking here.