WINNING premierships is an agonising process. While the rewards are worth it, reaching football's peak hurts. And teams taking short cuts don't win flags.

Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse understands that reality.

As Malthouse says when asked yesterday about the prospect of the Magpies winning back-to-back flags: "If you look at history, we are up against it".

So this year Malthouse confronts a challenge any reigning premiership coach faces. To sell the idea to the players it's worth going through the agony again; to find the balance between instilling belief and guarding against complacency, to maintain a culture of improvement.

He knows what the challenge is but he won't know for a while whether they are on track to meet it.

"The challenge for my players is 'are you a good side or are you a very good side?'. And we can't answer that until through the year," said Malthouse.

He can, however, put in blunt terms what hurdles sit in front of the team pursuing that status.

"Complacency. I can say that word a million times. History shows that is the very thing…complacency is the thing that gets you."

This is easy to know, but building a barrier to stop complacency from infiltrating the subconscious is harder.

So this summer Malthouse began work on a blank canvas, drawing on experience, on numbers, on the changing game to create for the players a challenge different from the one they met in 2010. "I've thought long and hard about this. It's not just a matter of going 'you have won last year so you should win this year'. That has never happened."

The first item to consider is Collingwood's 2011 list. Eleven players have departed the club or retired between seasons. This is a large turnover for any team let alone a premiership list.

Five players - Josh Fraser, Shane O'Bree, Tarkyn Lockyer, Simon Prestigiacomo and Paul Medhurst - who would have started the previous season in Collingwood's best side are no longer playing. John Anthony has left too, the manner of his departure a disappointment to Malthouse. They not only provided experience and leadership but also played 56 games between them during 2010.

Who will make up that shortfall is the first question for the coach to consider.

Only Chris Tarrant and Andrew Krakouer come on to the list as ready-made players, yet the coach says anything more than 30 games from them is a bonus. This is not an assessment based on their playing ability but a conservative measure that understands luck will play its hand at some stage.

That means players such as Cameron Wood, Brad Dick, Luke Rounds, Lachlan Keeffe and Simon Buckley will - at minimum - need to step in to provide the depth Collingwood enjoyed last season and put pressure on those within the team to perform. If the club gets lucky a first-year player might have an immediate impact but no club engaging in prudent planning banks on that.

The game will change too. The new interchange rules are likely to reduce rotations but somehow Collingwood needs to maintain the pressure. There is a bye every two months. The talent pool will be spread across 17 teams.

Collingwood's game plan - refined over three years - will require tweaking. "We're dead in the water if we stay with what we have got so we will make alterations that we think aren't going to undo what we've done but enhance what we've done," said Malthouse.  

Collingwood was not perfect in 2010. Its goalkicking could improve (after 22 rounds last season it had a 49 percent accuracy ratio). Malthouse will have reminded the players since the premiership that it escaped with a draw in the first grand final - inaccuracy in front of goal costly in the year's biggest match. Last season could so easily have ended in misery for Collingwood if Lenny Hayes' kick towards goal in the final seconds of the draw had gone through.

"We're in a bouncing ball world that doesn't necessarily bounce your way. That did bounce our way for us," said Malthouse.

There are external factors such as speculation surrounding the coaching handover and players being sought by other clubs that could distract if allowed. One of Malthouse's strengths is ensuring such forces don't disrupt the team's performance. The club has shown its capacity to overcome such distractions in previous years.

Then there is that history that Malthouse knows is a great teacher.

"You can't waste your life, and that is what I keep saying to these players," said Malthouse. "There is no question us Richmond players wasted 1981. To a lesser degree the West Coast Eagles players wasted 1993. I don't want Collingwood players, for that matter the Collingwood Football Club, to waste 2011. It would be a shame."

Malthouse played in Richmond's 1980 premiership team then was part of the team that slid to seventh the next season. He coached the Eagles to a flag in 1992 and they were knocked out in the second week of the finals in 1993. That they rebounded to win in 1994 just shows how hard back-to-backs are to win.

Two clubs have won back-to-back flags since 1990: Adelaide and the Brisbane Lions. Essendon's dominant 2000 team could not manage the feat, nor could Geelong between 2007 and 2010, despite winning 83 of the 100 games it played during that period. It is a sobering reminder of how tough premierships are to win.

In the end there is only so much the coach can do at this stage. Establish the reality of what the team faces, spell it out to the players, set the framework for the where the team needs to be and challenge the coaching and sports science staff to prepare the players to meet those challenges.

Recently Malthouse asked a young premiership player whether that player was as hungry going into 2011. The player said yes but Malthouse, ever alert, pulled him up. "I said: 'How can you prove that?' He said 'I think that' and I said 'no, no we'll save (answering) that (question) until after round seven, at the end of the first break, and then we will go revisit it at the end of round 13 and we'll find out if you're more hungry then what you were the previous year.'"

Plenty of questions will be asked of Collingwood in 2011. Malthouse knows this year will be different from the last. As he knows anything worth doing is difficult. This flag tilt will be no exception.