North Melbourne is facing a ruck shortage after the luckless Callum Coleman-Jones was injured in the opening term of his first game of the season and Sydney’s Brodie Grundy threatened to break records at the SCG.

The Kangaroos were able to keep pace with the Swans despite Grundy’s dominance in the ruck, before the hosts powered away in the final term for a 31-point victory on Saturday.

SWANS v KANGAROOS Full match coverage and stats

First-choice ruck Tristan Xerri still has two weeks to serve of his suspension for striking Melbourne’s Tom Sparrow, while the Roos’ back-up big man Brynn Teakle was outclassed by Grundy as the Swans won the hit-outs 80-10.

Coleman-Jones injured a calf and was subbed out at the first change in his comeback match after rupturing an Achilles on Good Friday last season.

"He's come back from a nasty Achilles injury. They're always a slow and difficult process to rehabilitate those types of injuries,” Kangaroos coach Alastair Clarkson said of the 200cm ruck who has played 23 matches in four years with the club.

“But to his credit, he worked really hard in getting himself back in the senior side and then hurts a calf, which I think is on the other side (to the Achilles injury), bizarrely enough. We'll wait and see and get that scanned, I don't know the severity of it.”

Grundy was on track early to challenge Todd Goldstein’s record of 80 hitouts in a game, as he had 39 taps to the main break.

But the 31-year-old’s hit-out dominance faded in the second half as he finished with 62 taps to fall short of the former Kangaroo’s benchmark as well as his own career-high 73.

The Swans continued to control the hitouts after Peter Ladhams was subbed into the game at the last change with the finals hopefuls having one eye on a crunch cross-town derby against Greater Western Sydney on Friday night. 

Clarkson pointed to raw talent Taylor Goad as an option to debut in North Melbourne’s clash with Geelong next week after the 207cm 20-year-old had 47 hitouts and 10 disposals in the VFL.

"It was hard for our midfielders to try to predict exactly what was going on with the ball when they had that type of hitout advantage over the course of the game," Clarkson said.

"I thought we battled away really bravely for a big part of the game in that part of it. But I think the clearances were 4-15 in the last quarter. We just couldn't sustain the competitiveness in that part of the game that we would have liked.”