NATHAN Buckley says Melbourne was simply prepared to work harder for longer than the Magpies on Saturday, which was a new facet of Collingwood's continuing mid-season slump.

The Magpies' sixth-straight loss came after they failed to kick a goal in the last quarter, and followed their heavy favouritism this week despite having not won since the round 12 bye.

Buckley said midfielder Dane Swan (36 disposals) was the only Pie who put in a four-quarter effort, with the Demons' "want, hunger and desperation" halting his team's ability to push forward and lock the ball in their attacking arc in the final term.

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"I've struggled to find many times throughout the year when our players just haven't tipped in, when they haven't provided a great effort," a visibly disappointed Buckley said.

"This game would probably be the closest thing to not tipping in that effort we've seen throughout the year.

"We lowered our colours today against a team that was prepared to work harder for longer than we were, and that's the first building block of the game.

"We can talk about offence or defensive structures or clearances, game plans, but if we can't bring that intensity to work harder for longer against our opposition and roll our sleeves up to do that, it's pretty hard to measure the other stuff."

Four of the Pies' five other recent losses have been by three goals or less, and none of them because of a lack of effort.

Buckley was particularly damning of their last quarter, where the Pies registered just 23 kicks – eight of which were ineffective.

With their "short-term validation poor", he said it was his job to ensure the players knew they remained on the right path despite the string of losses. 

"There's a bit of an economy of hope that takes place, and we've lost a little bit of it over the last month, and you need to get reward for your effort," he said.

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"It's a little bit about your finishing, your ability to take advantage of the work you've put in place.

"We've put a lot of work in and we didn't get a lot of feedback or response from it, but you've just got to keep grinding away.

"We'll learn a lot from this period.

“We'd prefer to get those lessons having won.

“We lowered our colours as far as the effort stakes go today, but that hasn't been a consistent part of our year."

Youngster Matthew Scharenberg had 16 possessions on debut, despite being told he was definitely playing just half an hour before the first bounce.

Tyson Goldsack's quad tightened enough in the warm up he had doubts on whether he'd get through, which catapulted the former No.6 draft pick onto the AFL stage with little fanfare but pleasing results for Buckley.

"He knows what he's doing," he said.

"He'll learn a lot from that. He's been thereabouts for the last three or four weeks and we think he's going to be a very good player for us."

Despite the result moving the Pies further away from a September berth, Buckley said they wouldn't give up on pushing back towards the top eight.

"We want to play finals. Internally, we've set our sights on playing finals in 2015," he said.

"We haven't set the agenda externally at any stage.

"We've just been about putting our head down and performing as well as we possibly could, as often as we possibly could, and we've been unable to do that in recent times. 

"We'll dust ourselves off and continue to try and win games and see where it gets us."