While Sydney coach John Longmire lamented his side's costly turnovers and inability to drive the advantage when they had moments of dominance, the big story was the continuing red-hot form of the Bulldogs, who are right up there now with four wins from their opening five matches.

"It just helps with your belief and acceptance of the fact that now you've had some good wins and you think that maybe we can challenge everyone," Beveridge said.

"We just want to take it as far as we can - and today helps. It just helps give us a little sniff that we can take it a bit further. There is no doubt the players' expectations will raise because that's an enormous win for our boys today, beating the Swans."

Asked about the expectations from outside the group, Beveridge said: "We need to make sure we stay composed and only make sure we take care of the things we can control. It's fantastic, the public, who've expressed that they're rapt with the way the Doggies are going, I think that's brilliant.

"I think it's great that maybe we've struck a chord with everyone in the way our players are playing, our young and experienced players. Maybe we can feed off that a little bit."

Beveridge was thrilled with the team's ability to keep its eye on the prize after leading for nearly the entire match, only to have the lead snatched late in the final quarter - before grabbing it back with Easton Wood's athletic poke-through for the match-winner in the dying minutes.

"West Coast was in the balance, Richmond was in the balance, there's no doubt today was," he said.

"Sometimes it can take a little while to win those close ones because you're trying to formulate some method. For this group, and their mix of youth and experience, that's probably the thing that's been brilliant. "

The Swans, meanwhile, will have to have a good look at their performance with Longmire suggesting they allowed the Bulldogs a win that should never have happened.

"We gave up some really easy goals and particularly early in the game we didn't capitalise when we had the chance. There is a 40-point differential in turnovers. In any conditions that's tough, but particularly in wet conditions," Longmire said.

"If you get on top early you've got to make sure you kick those goals. We kicked 2.5 with 19 entries in the first quarter and they were able to kick some really easy ones from a couple of basic errors from us. I thought that's where the game was lost."

Longmire said decision-making and execution were both poor from too many of his players.

"You've got to get it right," he said. "You're allowed a few game - those sort of things happen in games - but you just need to make sure it doesn't become too often, particularly in those conditions. We just made too many of the basic [errors]."