CTV> Mick Malthouse's post match press conferenceCOLLINGWOOD coach Mick Malthouse believes the Magpies' three-match winning streak will give the players confidence in each other heading into the final round and beyond.
The Magpies lost to North Melbourne, Essendon and Hawthorn before the club was rocked by the in-house suspension of Alan Didak, Heath and Rhyce Shaw.
It has since beaten St Kilda, Port Adelaide, and most recently and convincingly, the Sydney Swans.
Malthouse believes the players have been sharing the "load" of contribution in the past three rounds, which has assisted in restoring their form.
"I don't know whether there has been a line drawn, but we've been pretty good in the past three weeks," he said.
"Today, we were 40-odd years younger than Sydney ... you give a lot of experience away but what you do end up having is players, like [Tyson] Goldsack – he had nine tackles, and he's in his second year of footy.
"[Shane] O'Bree has been there for 10 to 12 years and he has seven tackles.
"It's a confidence we're spreading the load, and that's been pretty evident in the last three weeks."
He also highlighted the injury problems the Pies had been faced with this year, and praised the players for learning to cope with a frequently changing line-up.
"On your piece of paper, draw a little ground. Put [Sean] Rusling in at full-forward, [Ben] Reid at centre half-forward, Anthony Rocca in the forward pocket, Brad Dick in the other forward pocket, [Dale] Thomas on one forward flank and [Alan] Didak on the other forward flank," he said.
"Now, tell me which forward line you'd have. Tonight's, or that one.
"Why I'm saying is we've had to battle a constant flow of players going out of the side, and hold up.
"It's not always easy when week-in week-out you get hit with the next opponent who are all vying for the same spots as us in the eight.
"It's not easy when you haven't got that consistency of those players playing together. When they start to work together, there's a belief.
"That forward line is far more experienced than the one we had out there tonight. Iis it better? It's not a bad forward line.
"We've had to reinvent ourselves, and sometimes you do that over a pre-season. We've had to do it through the season under massive pressure.
"I think the boys have done very well to readjust. I don't know how far we're going to go, how we're going to go next week, but the more we play this group together, the better we're going to get."
