COLLINGWOOD is becoming a good team but needs to aim higher and become a great one, coach Nathan Buckley says.

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The Magpies sit one game out of the top four after 14 rounds with an 8-5 record.

Although the Pies have yet to claim a big-name scalp this season, they have fallen just inches from beating ladder-leader Fremantle and reigning premier Hawthorn in the past two rounds.

In Friday night's 10-point loss to the Hawks, the Pies had five more scoring shots and probably cost themselves the game in the third quarter when they kicked a wayward 2.9 to the Hawks' 4.2.

Buckley said after the match that his team was heading in the right direction, but still had to step up.

"I think there's a little bit of licence to be good that's still there to be taken by our players, maybe even just the licence to be great," Buckley said.

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"I think we potentially could be good right now: our consistency of effort, the strength of our leadership and our connection out on field is at a level where you can be more than competitive against any opposition.

"So the next step is to go from good to great on-field, and we've got great standards and, using Phil Walsh's terms, we've got elite standards on and off the field.

"It's the last point for us – and this can take a week or two years or three years or you could never get there – that transition from understanding you're good, but allowing yourself to be great.

"We're really in the infancy of that, and how long that takes is up to us and our belief."

Asked whether Hawthorn had been able to find another gear when Collingwood kicked out to a nine-point lead early in the last quarter, Buckley said he simply felt the game had swung on a few key moments.

"I felt like when a couple of those moments came that we just didn't make the plays, whether it was a hard handball or a contest in the air," he said.

"I thought we were still taking the game on, we still wanted to play our way, but their class shone through overall.

"But I didn't get the sense at any stage that they were able to find a gear that we couldn't match."

Buckley paid special tribute to Scott Pendlebury, after his captain produced one of the very best performances of his stellar career.

"That's as good as I've seen him play," Buckley said.

"He's played some pretty good games, (but) 20 contested possessions, 10 clearances, 10 tackles, 37 touches, that's fairly dominant, and I thought he was everywhere."

All of the statistics Buckley cited were game-highs, while Pendlebury also had two more score assists than any other player on the ground (five).