In an AFL war of attrition, Sydney coach John Longmire says he simply ran out of soldiers.

But while Longmire says there are reasons behind Sydney’s 25-point preliminary final loss to Fremantle, they don’t hide the “absolute disappointment” of the defeat.

“We needed a few more fresh men in the end,” Longmire told reporters on Saturday night.

The Swans entered their preliminary final in Perth without much of their senior core – from linchpin Adam Goodes to star recruit Kurt Tippett, to tall swingmen Sam Reid and Lewis Roberts-Thompson.

Their absences continued a season-long theme for the Swans: a spate of injuries to key players which Longmire said was the worst in 14 years at the club.

“In at least 14 years … we haven’t had as many senior games missed as what we have had this year,” he said.

“It’s over twice as many as we had last year.

“You need a lot to go your way.

“But the injuries just seemed to happen to our senior players a lot this year and we didn’t get a lot back, a lot of them were long term.”

But Longmire said the Swans made progress, despite their injury worries.

“What I am pleased about is we were able to get ourselves in a position to give ourselves a chance,” he said.

“We had some challenges thrown up at us during the year and we were able to deal with that pretty well.”