THE Collingwood review at the end of last season was as exhaustive as it was highly discussed – but it wasn't a spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation or Leading Teams-style honesty session that sparked the club's turnaround.

It might have been a good, old-fashioned game of footy that started the Pies on the road to redemption and a preliminary final berth this Friday night at the MCG.

According to Collingwood president Eddie McGuire, last year's round 23 win over Melbourne was the catalyst for much that has happened at the club consequently. The Demons were on the verge of making the finals, the Pies had tee times booked for the following day.

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"Melbourne supporters came out for their victory lap that evening. They had everything to lose, we had nothing to gain," McGuire recalled as he stood in the boisterous Magpies rooms late on Saturday night. "It was the night Brodie Grundy and Mason Cox proved they could play in the same team together. 

"A lot of things from that game made me walk away believing in the intestinal fortitude of the playing group and the coaching department and the organisation."

Twelve months later, after a raft of organisational changes but with the coach still intact, the Magpies are a game away from the Grand Final. They'll kickstart a magical penultimate weekend of the season, in which both the tribal nature and national aspirations of the competition will be on display. 

Bitter rivals Richmond and Collingwood on Friday night at the MCG, followed by West Coast and Melbourne at Optus Stadium the following afternoon.

"The AFL is going to find out it's a national competition but it all comes down to suburb versus suburb," McGuire said. "It's only one stretch of road. Hoddle Street and Punt Road. Here we come. Bring on the Tigers."

The Pies head into the preliminary final with some confidence. The Tigers beat them by 43 points in round six and 28 points in round 19, but it took a late surge from Richmond to get the win in the latter game and the Pies were short-sticked by then with both Jeremy Howe and Matt Scharenberg injured and off the ground.

"They're the benchmark," Collingwood football boss Geoff Walsh said. "We'll need to bring our A game, but our history shows that on our night we're capable. We respect them, but they don't hold any fears for us."

Not surprisingly, his president was that bit more pugnacious as he anticipated what lies ahead.

"To be the champ, you've got to beat the champ," he said.

Bitter rivals rev up for battle

Despite the hype, the Tigers will enter the preliminary final as deserved favourites. The Pies will need a few more tricks up their sleeve to break down the most organised team we have seen for several years.

Still, it will be a fun week, what with the history between these two clubs, which started with the Dan Minogue defection from Collingwood to Richmond in 1920 (which McGuire suggested on Saturday night is still the cause for rancor), four Grand Finals in that decade alone, Lou Richards and Jack Dyer egging each other on for a quarter of a century and the 1980s recruiting wars between them that nearly sent both clubs to the wall.

There is also the real possibility of the first 100,000-plus crowd at a preliminary final since 1971, when St Kilda beat Richmond.

Collingwood and Geelong attracted 98,002 to their epic preliminary final in 2007 but that figure could well be beaten. The AFL put out a ticket advisory on Sunday morning with the letters 'N/A' next to the general admission category. Best of luck trying to get a seat for this one if you're not a member of either club, the AFL or the MCC.

And good luck to you, Ticketek. Don't mess this up.

Demons go west, on a mission

The MCG final will attract all the hype, but it is the Optus Stadium preliminary final that is far harder to predict. Melbourne is on a roll, playing with the same verve and confidence as the Western Bulldogs in 2016.

And the Demons head to Perth to face the Eagles for the second time in five weeks, knowing they went there and won by 17 points.

A bit like the Pies, the Demons can identify the game in which it all started to turn. And no, it wasn't the round 23 game last year, as calamitous as it was, but it was a defeat almost as heartbreaking.

Talking after the win over Hawthorn on Friday night, Melbourne defender Oscar McDonald said it was the last-gasp loss to Geelong in round 18 that proved to be the turning point for the Demons.

"We just hadn't played any big games," he said. "And it showed against Geelong at Geelong. We started analysing things, looking at our composure, our hard defense and stopping the momentum of other teams."

That worked paid off superbly on Friday night. The Hawks came hard at the Demons at various stages in the second, third and final quarters, but they snuffed out the challenge each time.

"We knew they were going to come because they've been doing that for 10 years. But we have a resilient playing and coaching staff that knows how to overcome these hurdles," McDonald said.

That pressure will be magnified five-fold come Saturday afternoon. McDonald reckons because of the design of the new stadium, the crowd makes twice the noise they might at the MCG. And after two weeks of heavy crowd favouritism, they'll be dealing with the opposite in Perth.

"It was a finals-type game a few weeks ago and we expect a similar contest. We know what they like to do and we'll try to beat that somehow."

Optus Stadium holds no fears for a resurgent Demons outfit. Picture: AFL Photos

Can the Hawks land another big fish?

Few Hawthorn people can quibble about the season that finished with the loss to Melbourne on Friday night. As expected, the Demons gave them some looks, but the Hawks weren't good enough in the crunch to take advantage of them.

As forecast by Alastair Clarkson, they needed plenty to go their way, both in personnel and the way the games unfolded, to push deep into September. They couldn't afford to be a touch off and didn't have the depth to cover the major losses of Ben Stratton and Jaeger O'Meara.

"See ya next year," Clarkson said as he departed the post-match media conference, but as we know, the master coach is only getting started. There are overseas study trips to be had and trades to be made. The Hawks move stealthily and do some of their very best work in the month of October.

Only when O'Meara announced a few weeks out at the end of 2016 that he wanted to join the club, has Hawthorn's trade moves been made public. Otherwise, footy boss Graham Wright lurks in the shadows. Cyril Rioli and Tyrone Vickery are off the books now, meaning the Hawks have some cash to splash. They'll be interesting to watch come next month.

Hawthorn secured the services of gun midfielder Jaeger O'Meara in 2016. Who's next? Picture: AFL Photos

Injuries take a Giant toll

Nor should there be much widespread angst among the Giants. Taking into account their injury toll, 2018 just wasn't meant to be.

Tom Scully, Brett Deledio, Zac Williams and Toby Greene just missed too much footy over the course of the year and Leon Cameron could never get close to his best 22 on the park. Heath Shaw and Josh Kelly were injured at the most unfortunate moments.

Their next few weeks will bear watching. Do they need to jettison another big name to stay under the salary cap and who will it be?

What they did discover this year was a bit more ticker. There's more grunt under the bonnet of the Ferrari than there once was and the feeling here is that a flag in the next couple of years is not beyond this group.

This might be the season the Giants needed to have.