AFTER a horror night of injuries, Collingwood has conceded it faces a near-impossible mission to play finals in 2014 and could turn its attention to next season.
The Magpies appear to have lost key players Travis Cloke (ankle), Dayne Beams (knee) and Ben Reid (hamstring) for the rest of the season following Saturday night's 67-point loss to the Brisbane Lions.
They now sit 10th on the ladder, 14.3 per cent behind eighth-placed Adelaide, with Richmond also charging for the last finals spot and in much better form.
On Sunday morning, director of football Rodney Eade confirmed Beams and Reid were likely to miss the rest of the season, with Cloke's year certainly finished with a high ankle sprain.
"It was a bad one … I reckon if we were in the season it could have even been six to eight [weeks]," Eade said of Cloke's injury on radio station Triple M.
"We were even thinking of trying to put him up in the goal square in the second half to sort of help with rotations, but he just couldn't put any weight on it.
"We'll try to obviously get up and win next week, that's our aim, but it'll be on the back of some guys playing their first game.
"There's only two weeks left and we've got Hawthorn in the last game, so it's going to be a difficult assignment with such a young group."
Beams appeared to have avoided injury to his anterior cruciate ligament after assessment from club doctors, but the star midfielder had scans on his left knee on Sunday morning with damage to his posterior cruciate ligament more likely.
Captain Scott Pendlebury, who was a late withdrawal on Saturday night with a corked thigh, could return next week against Greater Western Sydney.
Still, with so many senior players sidelined, midfielder Steele Sidebottom said September football was all but ruled out for the Magpies.
"By the way it looks now it's going to be pretty much impossible to make it [finals]," he told Channel Seven's AFL Game Day.
"We've got to have two really big wins to have a chance.
"From such a good start to the year, we've really fallen away and it's really disappointing.
"We've had a lot of really young blokes come in and play well, so I think there's some good points to take out of [the season]."
