HIS family has a long history of playing in Collingwood grand finals, but Heath Shaw won't be spending the next week gleaning advice at the dinner table.

Shaw's father Ray played in the losing grand final sides of 1977, 1979, 1980 and 1981 while brother Rhyce was part of the 2003 team that fell to the Brisbane Lions.

Uncle Tony famously captained the Magpies to their drought-breaking 1990 win.

The youngest member of the Shaw family to play at AFL level said any lessons had little relevance now.

"You look at the disappointment they've had and the stories they tell but it's a different ball game," Shaw said after Friday night's preliminary final win over Geelong.

"It's changed a lot since when Rhyce was in the grand finals. You can only look forward, there is no need to look back. We're just getting ourselves right for this week and hopefully it all turns out well."

Unlike most of his teammates, 24-year-old Shaw has been a part of Collingwood since his birth.

He was too young to remember anything of the 1990 triumph, but could recall the club's heartbreak of 2002 and 2003.

"I was watching Rhyce and that disappointment afterwards at getting so close. It was sort of like us over the last couple of years getting into preliminary finals and being pretty close," he said.

"But we're there now, we've got our opportunity and we're going to take it with both hands and give it a real crack."

Shaw had become all too familiar with his season ending at Geelong's hands - in the preliminary finals of 2007 and 2009 - and he said an inner-belief meant it was never going to happen again.

"Earlier on in the year we played Geelong and lost. We took a lot out of that and in round 19 we knew our game plan would stand up," he said.

"Again, we take confidence out of that game into this game here. We've played them and lost in two preliminary finals.

"You don't want to make it a third so we were very determined to stick to our structures and get the result."