COLLINGWOOD coach Mick Malthouse admits his team was not its usual self in the early stages of Sunday's win over Essendon but he is unlikely to analyse the reasons in too much detail.

The Magpies conceded eight first-quarter goals to the Bombers and Malthouse said after the game that it was only natural for footballers to be flat at times.

"It's a product of being human. If we were all robots, how much easier would it be for coaching?" Malthouse said following the win.

He admitted he was not entirely happy with the performance despite demolishing Essendon by 74 points.

"There were a number of issues; one is, I don't think I've seen a side as flat or dreadful early on. I was looking for someone to say, 'No we're right'," he said.

"Before the game I had this overwhelming feeling when I was talking to blokes that something was missing."

Malthouse said his players were noticeably disappointed with their first-half performance and sharpened up after the main break.

"At the half-time meeting we were able to generate a little bit of thought process in the way we were playing and tried to be a little bit more programmed to what we do best," he said.

"I thought our press in the third quarter, early, was very good. That kept the ball in our front end. We kicked 1.3 from 11 entries which is not fantastic but what it signified was that we'd woken up and we were playing football we needed to play."

The Bombers were hit hard by injury with both Brent Prismall and Travis Colyer suffering leg injuries in the first quarter.

Malthouse, who has frequently expressed his dislike of the interchange rules that allows three players and a substitute on the bench, said the Bombers were handicapped by the circumstances.

"I've been pushing this for 20 years. You can't have 18 players out there subjected to two interchange players, then it becomes three, then becomes four and goes back to three. I don't want to harp totally on it but I don't think we're helping each other with that," he said.

"I'm not here to stick up for Jimmy Hird but clearly they had two or three players coming on and off who were battling to stay out. When you've got that you start to get a bit of momentum and start to get a bit of confidence and start to get out of your rut. Then we start to score and they chase us."