Collingwood will bring back veterans Jeremy Howe and Steele Sidebottom for Friday nightās clash with Brisbane, but coach Craig McRae remains guarded over whether the club will rest tired players ahead of their looming sudden-death wildcard final.
McRae said Brayden Maynard (leg) failed a fitness test and would not play against the Lions at the MCG, while Isaac Quaynor (glute) will be another omission from the team that drew with Hawthorn last round.
But the Collingwood coach declined to comment on whether the Magpies would manage individual players, such as Nick and Josh Daicos, for their final home-and-away match.
The Magpies, who announced an AFL record of 113,362 members on Wednesday, are sitting eighth with potential to move to seventh, while Brisbane need to win to avoid dropping from third to outside the top four.
āIāve heard the narrative, everyoneās trying to take us towards the Bulldogs (ninth), which is a potential (wildcard) match-up, but it could be Carlton (10th), it could be anyone else,ā McRae said on Wednesday ahead of their match committee meeting.
āEveryoneās trying to take us to towards the future, and weāre really just determined to stay here, whatās relevant right now, and control what we can around that.ā
McRae said his playing group and club were āreally hungryā to take momentum and rhythm into a new-look finals series.
āNo oneās had this in the history of a game ā in this format, anyway. So weāll learn some lessons along the way,ā he said.
āThereās no perfect answer to it. We rest five players, weāll be judged on that. We donāt rest five players, we will be judged on that.
āIād be lying if I said I hadnāt had sleepless nights thinking about all the scenarios around what could be and what may be, but the reality is that weāll just deal in what we can control.
āAnd, Iāll repeat, thereās an appetite to keep playing. All our players are really hungry to keep performing really well.ā
McRae said Collingwoodās selection process would not be affected by an AFL memo earlier this month that warned clubs they would be fined if they rested players en masse.
āThey set parameters in place for a reason because they want the integrity of the game to be in place,ā McRae said.
āBut management of players is delicate. Thereās so many layers to it. Thereās training, thereās playing, thereās all sorts of things that we have the data around, and weāll make the appropriate decisions regarding all that.
āI didnāt read it [the memo]. I know [Collingwood football manager] Charlie Gardiner read it and articulated that to us, and I think itās a bit of a common-sense thing that they donāt want 15 players rested. But, again, weāll do whatās best for what we think we need for this weekend and beyond.ā
McRae said he understood the ongoing interest from rival clubs in games record-holder Scott Pendlebury, but could not imagine a future in which he was not at Collingwood next year.
āI probably canāt [imagine it] because the black and white looks so good on him,ā McRae said. āBut I can see the attraction from other clubs because they only have a perception of what could be.
āWell, we have the reality of what is and how influential he is to our players and to our culture, so I can see thereās an attraction, and why that would be the case.ā
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