COLLINGWOOD coach Mick Malthouse believes his side’s recent dominance against the Sydney Swans might make it tougher for his team to repeat the dose this weekend.

The Magpies travel to ANZ Stadium on Saturday night, a venue that has been a happy hunting ground in recent times.

Collingwood has won its past three matches at the venue and has also beaten the Swans in its past six matches. However Malthouse believes that might give the Swans added motivation to end his side’s winning run.

“I admire Sydney, the playing group will always say that I’ve admired Sydney and the way they’ve gone about their year and how they’ve built themselves up,” Malthouse said from the Lexus Centre on Tuesday.

“We’ve had a good record against them; that makes it even more difficult.”

Malthouse will coach his 600th VFL/AFL game on Saturday night, becoming only the third coach behind Jock McHale (714) and Kevin Sheedy (635) to reach the milestone.

The coach is yet to finalise the team that will run out in the round 12 fixture. While most Magpies will be eager to see whether Paul Medhurst returns after playing 70 per cent of game time in the VFL last week, there also appears to be concerns regarding the fitness of Dale Thomas.

The versatile Pie didn’t train on Tuesday, with Malthouse saying it was important the club managed its players.

“He’ll be right,” Malthouse said of Thomas.

“We often let players have the odd couple of days off to freshen up, it's a long season.

“You'll see that right throughout the rest of this year, players not turning up until the last training session.

“I’m not prepared to guess on our side but we’re looking forward to the game, it's going to be a tough game,” Malthouse said.

Earlier in the media conference, Malthouse had descibed his 2009 squad as being “in a very similar situation” to that of both 2007 and last year.

The Collingwood mentor knows the significance of every match, and while not one to take much notice of the ladder until the end of round 22, one suspects he has rammed home the importance of Saturday night’s clash with the Swans.

“This is the tightness of the competition; win the game and we’re fourth [but] lose the game and I think we’re seventh,” he said.

“All that is so relevant because clearly, you finish in the top four … you know what, first and fourth there’s no difference – you play on the same ground.”