COLLINGWOOD midfielder Adam Treloar says Port Adelaide "wanted it more" on Saturday, but has backed the Magpies to respond against Hawthorn next week and keep their faint finals hopes alive.

The Power physically smashed the Magpies in Saturday's 31-point loss at the MCG, leading coach Nathan Buckley to use the words "bullied" and "schooled" in his post-match assessment.

While Buckley believed his players' work rate "wasn't poor", Treloar said from a player's perspective, the Power were simply hungrier.

"It felt as though they wanted it more. It was pretty disappointing," Treloar told AFL.com.au afterwards.

"We came in with high hopes and high expectations off the back of our recent form, and we thought if we played that brand of footy we'd give ourselves a decent opportunity to win the game.

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"The way they moved the footy through us with ease was disappointing defensively. We were very stagnant with our ball movement and we weren't aggressive with the change of angles or any way we wanted to play.

"We fell into their pressure a bit and coughed the ball over, and the basic fundamentals hurt as well.

"But we've just got to lick our wounds. They were far better than us today."

The Pies are precariously placed at five wins and eight losses.

By the end of round 14, they could be two games out of the eight and potentially in the bottom four.

But, with the even nature and unpredictability of this year's competition, Treloar said finals weren't something they were writing off.

"We don't think or talk about finals at all," he said.

"We know we let the weekend take care of that.

"When we play our brand of footy and we're aggressive and we attack the game and win the contested footy, we're a hard team to beat.

"This was a game we let slip, pretty much. An opportunity that went missing, considering how we've been performing lately.

"We've got some quality oppositions in the run home to the end of the year, whether that's finals or not, and if we want to play finals, we need to beat quality opposition teams and today was one of them and we didn't."

"But we've got next week and plenty of more opportunities after that, so we've got to lick our wounds and hopefully take it up to Hawthorn."

With a raft of tough challenges to come, including five current top-eight sides in their last six games, the Magpies don't have an easy passage if they're to make a bid for September.

Treloar said it all started with the Hawks on Sunday, and emphasised the importance of a fast start with their opponents sure to be smarting after they gave up a 43-point lead in round nine to lose by 18.

"It's a huge game, they were in awesome form on Thursday night [against Adelaide]," he said.

"The last time we played them they were up by six goals at quarter-time and we won, so they'll want to get one up on us, so we'll need to be on from the start."