COLLINGWOOD coach Mick Malthouse says he won't play captain Nick Maxwell in the finals if he isn't fully fit or recovered from the fractured thumb he sustained on Friday night against St Kilda.
Maxwell had surgery on Sunday to repair the break, which takes the tally of premiership Magpies nursing hand injuries to three with Chris Dawes and Alan Toovey yet to return from their respective problems.
Maxwell is expected to miss three to four weeks, meaning he will miss the rest of the home and away season and potentially the Pies' first final, and he won't be able to handle a football for at least the next week.
Malthouse told SEN on Tuesday morning no player was considered a walk-up start, and later expanded when asked about the similarity to when he left John Worsfold out of the West Coast side in the second week of finals in 1998.
"The experience I've had is, any finals series you go in with people that can't get through a game of football, you run a massive risk of being burned," Malthouse said at the Westpac Centre.
"The next day when you wake up and your finals series has finished, you haven't got round 21, 22 and 23. It's gone.
"We will be doing everything possible to get 28, 29 players ready for senior football, and when we go through the series, we'll be picking the best side on a combination of leadership and form and availability of players to play certain roles.
"You know what happens along the way? Someone gets burned, someone falls out, someone is aggrieved and someone doesn't forget for a long time until they either coach or they have a think about things and they realise you don't go out of your way to hurt people; you go out of your way to pick the best side."
In '98, Malthouse dropped Worsfold the morning of an elimination final against the Western Bulldogs, as he believed the now-West Coast coach would not get through owing to a knee complaint.
Worsfold retired after the game, which the Eagles lost by 70 points.
Ironically, Worsfold was later in the same position as coach when Phil Matera was a late withdrawal from the 2005 Grand Final against the Sydney Swans with a groin injury.
Malthouse indicated he wouldn't shy away from making a similarly tough decision if the Pies' skipper wasn't 100 per cent.
He also said he would use the Pies' remaining games against the Brisbane Lions, Fremantle and Geelong to "experiment" and ensure an expanded squad of players was ready to cover potential absentees during the finals.
"I'm an employee of a football club and the job I have is this; to make sure the football club, the team I put down there, is the one I believe can win the game of football," he said.
"With three rounds to go, that's still the case but also it would be to get yourselves ready for finals.
"I don't think we can statistically fall below second so that would give me a chance to experiment and we will.
"But you can get your fingers burned if you do it too much, and as far as the captains go, you've got to pick the side that's going to represent you the best."
Malthouse also backed the leadership group to fill the void left by Maxwell, who also missed four matches with a calf injury in the premiership year of 2010.
"We're quite capable there and I think the inclusion of [Darren] Jolly and [Luke] Ball into the football club has helped enormously there but we're also on top of that with Scott Pendlebury, Dane Swan, Harry O'Brien," he said.
"It's not ideal and you've got to overcome those things. You can't sit back and think that it's going to be a massive negative."
Malthouse said Alan Didak would play a full game this week against the Lions after being the substitute player the past two rounds, and would prove over the next three matches he was ready for finals football after he missed five games with a calf injury.
Dawes and Toovey will be considered for selection, depending on how they train, but there could be as many as four changes to the side with some players sore and others with form issues.
Malthouse also said he expected Heath Shaw to return from Arizona "fitter and just as strong" before he would be subject to three weeks of full training with "half-ground press practice matches" conducted mainly for his benefit each week until the end of his suspension in time for the first final.
Jennifer Witham covers Collingwood news for the AFL Website. Follow her on Twitter @AFL_JenWitham.
