COLLINGWOOD defender Ben Johnson says his side can't afford to let St Kilda stars Brendon Goddard and Lenny Hayes run free in this week's grand final like they did last week.
Hayes won the Norm Smith Medal for being the best player on the ground while Goddard was close behind after a stellar second half, which included a great mark and goal that put his side in front for the first time on the day.
The Magpies led by four goals at half time before Goddard fired up and dragged his side towards the finish line, with the Pies seemingly unable to quell his enormous influence.
"I'm sure we don't want those two boys playing like they did, because they just dominated," Johnson said at the Westpac Centre on Tuesday afternoon.
Young defender Ben Reid, who was excellent in the first grand final, said the team would have to try some different strategies to combat Goddard.
"He’s a fantastic player and when he plays forward we’ll have a few ideas to be able to stop him," Reid said.
"I’m sure we’ll get the right match up for him this week.
"We back our game plan that we played with all year. Obviously we finished on top of the ladder with the game plan that we had, so we’ll go in and play the same way we have all year and hopefully come away with the win."
The Magpies took the ball inside their forward 50 62 times compared to St Kilda's 35 but could not kick a winning score, due both to inaccurate kicking for goal, and poor delivery to the forwards, which saw the ball either rebounded by the St Kilda defence, or punched through for a behind.
Young midfielder Sharrod Wellingham, who admitted he struggled with the pressure of the biggest game of the year, said the side would have to look at making some changes.
"We'll definitely have to look at something different - you've got (Sam) Fisher taking seven or eight contested marks down there, and we don't want to be kicking it to him," Wellingham said.
"Whether it be a different approach to getting it in there - slower or faster or whatever we have to do, we'll try to quell his influence on the game as much as possible."
But Wellingham didn't expect that his side would be able to make too many significant changes, given the way the Saints play.
"Any time you play a team like St Kilda, they're a very structured-up and disciplined team, and you don't really get that open running free game that we're quite happy playing," Wellingham said.
"If we can do that we will, but they're going to try to restrict us in that respect.
"It's definitely going to be a hard slog - you look at the kind of players they've got running through the midfield, and that's the kind of game that they want."
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