Shaw missed the win over Geelong a fortnight ago because of suspension and was left out last Friday against the Sydney Swans because of back soreness, although as coach Nathan Buckley admitted on Tuesday, it was touch and go.
"We could have played him and pushed him through, but we chose to back the defensive line-up that did the job against Geelong," Buckley said.
Shaw will be a welcome return. Buckley may have kept faith in the defensive unit from the win over Geelong, but it let him down and the review of the match – and the season to date – revealed that the backline and ball movement remain Collingwood's greatest areas of weakness.
"Clearly we have to move the ball better but our main focus is on how we defend," he said.
"We're not happy where we're at. We need to be able to run hard enough and defend hard enough against the best sides. We practised that during the week and we get do so again against Brisbane."
Buckley said the Swans were the best team that Collingwood had played for the year. He identified that the Swans have "up to eight elite endurance runners that can run at pace up and back" and that his side had far fewer.
"We're going to have to rely on supporting each other a bit more and close sides down at the source. If we make it a running battle it makes it harder for us to win.
"We're a hard, contested ball side and when we put pressure on the opposition, then we create opportunities and we defend well."
What he didn't say, and what surely has been a major factor for the Pies this year is that two of his best runners have been hobbled.
Dale Thomas has barely played all year while Clinton Young, lured across from Hawthorn on an attractive deal, has yet to play at all because of a series of leg injuries.
Collingwood in the past six weeks has gone win-loss, win-loss, win-loss.
"That takes its toll," Buckley said. "You've got to arrest it at some stage and the opportunity we have got is to travel to Brisbane."
Any other changes to the side for the clash with the Lions will be based on form.
"Clearly, there needs to be changes after a performance like that," Buckley said. Ben Johnson and Alan Didak are in the selection mix as are Josh Thomas, Adam Oxley and Kyle Martin.
He said the Pies had played Quinten Lynch less in the ruck and more out of the forward line the past few weeks and that this will be addressed this week, while ruckman Darren Jolly's two near-misses in the past fortnight with the match review panel had been noted by the coaches.
The Pies are 5-4 and now out of the eight after the 57-point loss to the Swans. Their record against the five teams on top of the ladder this year – Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney, Essendon and Fremantle – is 1-4.
"We expect to be playing better football in the second half of the year. We're exposing a lot of talent, they're getting better at understanding our system and we've spent 18 months educating our senior players about the system that needs to be played in today's football," Buckley said.
Key defender Lachlan Keeffe played his first match in 12 months following a knee reconstruction in the VFL and while his knee stood up well, he received a knock the kidney and will be sidelined this weekend.
Young needs two more weeks of full training before he is considered for VFL selection, so his AFL debut for Collingwood would appear to be at least a month away.
