The Magpies had impressed all comers in their three previous games this season and were expected to easily account for the Blues last Sunday, but tripped up badly and now find themselves with a 2-2 record – the same as the Kangaroos.
Asked if he felt the Magpies would be determined to atone for their shock loss, Laidley was unequivocal that his side would be facing a fired-up unit.
“Of course, there’s no doubt about that,” Laidley said.
“They’ll be ready to go, and it will be a pretty hot start, I imagine. But our boys are up for the challenge.”
While a crowd of 70,000 is expected to pack the MCG for the game, the two sides haven’t clashed for quite some time, a quirk of the draw the Roos’ coach found hard to believe.
“I think they’re a very good football side but we haven’t played them in 30 games, which is just staggering in this competition,” Laidley said.
“It’s been from round one last year to round five this year, so a lot of water’s gone under the bridge and they’re a vastly different side, I would imagine.
“So again, we’re looking forward to the challenge.”
But while they haven’t met for some time, Laidley said the game could be decided by the ‘core’ players, with some extra effort expected from those overlooked to play in the Hall of Fame tribute match in May.
“If our core group stands up, and we’ve probably got roughly the same amount of guys as Collingwood in that sort of area, I think they’re the guys who’ll probably have a significant impact on the game,” he said.
“You look at a couple of our guys, I would have thought they’d have a fair bit to prove because the (Hall of Fame match) squads that were named this week, and whether they’d play or not, I’d have thought (Corey) Jones and (Hamish) McIntosh would have got in.”
Laidley denied his side would be overawed by the big occasion on Saturday night and said they’d already enjoyed plenty of experience in front of large crowds.
“We’ve played in some finals, including a great finals series last year with a lot of people, and our crowds for a few games this year have been (good), we’ve sold out Telstra Dome, and a sold out Telstra Dome equates to 70,000 at the MCG,” he said.
“We want our supporters to come out and support us, there’s no doubt about that, even though it’s not our home game.”
One man who will have the turnstiles ticking over is Nathan Thompson, who booted five goals against Melbourne last week in his best performance since returning from a knee reconstruction which kept him out for the whole of 2007.
However, Laidley warned that too much should not be expected of the big forward too soon.
“He’s slowly (recovering), we can’t expect too much of Nathan and if he can just form a great partnership with Jones and (Aaron) Edwards and (David) Hale if he’s down there or (Leigh) Brown if he’s down there or (Drew) Petrie if he’s down there, that’s all we’re after,” Laidley said.
“We don’t want to put too much expectation on him as it’s very hard coming off a knee reconstruction, and we need to make sure we look after him.”
