COLLINGWOOD six-goal star Travis Cloke has revealed the Magpies' blueprint for forward success in their 88-point demolition of Melbourne on Monday: isolate Jared Rivers.

Cloke kicked five goals in a little over a quarter and a half while manned by Rivers before James Frawley was given the task for the rest of the match.

Afterwards, Cloke said his team tried to keep Rivers deep in defence and steer as much football through his direct opponent as possible.

"That was sort of a technique that we wanted to do," Cloke said.

"We knew we'd done Rivers over in the first quarter, so that's what we wanted to do in the second half.

"We wanted to isolate Rivers again, whether it was 'Dawesy' [Chris Dawes] or 'Browny' [Leigh Brown] or any of the other small forwards, that's where we wanted the ball to go through."

At 92kg, Rivers gave away 16kg to the 108kg Cloke in one-on-one contests and 13kg to the 105kg Dawes, and it showed.

Cloke amassed six first-half marks (three contested) as Rivers tried without success to play him from in front.

"He [Rivers] backs himself to read the ball pretty well, and he normally does it," Cloke said.

"There was a little bit of a wind and it drifted a little bit more … and I guess the ball just fell my way a little bit more than his this afternoon."

After 2010 All Australian defender Frawley switched to Cloke, Rivers went to Dawes.

Relatively quiet in the first half, Dawes became more of a focus in the second, amassing 12 of his 18 possessions, including four marks and three shots on goal (for 1.2) after half-time.

Cloke, on the other hand, played further up the ground, adding just one more goal to his tally, an enormous left-foot bomb from 60 metres during the third quarter.

"[After half-time] I was more just trying to push out and leave a bit more space for Dawes and Brown to come into, and they popped up and kicked a few goals themselves," Cloke said.

"'Dawesy' took some really great marks and 'Browny' late in the quarter took some really great marks deep as well.

"That's what we wanted to do. We spoke about it, and I guess it came off pretty well."

Incredibly, after Cloke had kicked five of his team's nine goals to half-time, the Magpies finished with 11 different goal-kickers, a spread that has become synonymous with Mick Malthouse's team during its recent success.

The 2010 premiers had seven separate goal-kickers in a devastating eight-goals-to-one final term that blew the margin out from 41 points at three-quarter-time to 88 points when the timekeeper finally brought the slaughter to a halt.

"That's been a positive for us the last two years," Cloke said.

"We don't rely on one or two people to kick the goals.

"We have 10 or 11 every week kicking one or two and popping up.

"We do have someone kicking four or five most weeks, but we don't really on that one person every week, which is great."

Cloke's six goals was a personal best and increased his season total to 29, fifth in the Coleman Medal race.

His three contested marks took his tally for the year to a league-leading 45, a huge 16 marks clear of his nearest rival, West Coast's Josh Kennedy.

The 2004 father-son selection said hard work, not brute strength, had been the reason for his success in the air.

"'Dawesy' and myself, we do a lot of work on contested ball, on reading our opponents, our body work and all that," he said.

"You've got to do the work at training before it comes into your game, and we've been working on it for two years. Obviously we're starting to see some results at the moment, which is great."