Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley failed to find a winner for the Magpies in their 30-point loss to North Melbourne on Saturday night, saying it was too easy to blame Travis Cloke and Chris Dawes.

The tall forward duo had minimal impact against the Kangaroos, registering six marks and no goals between them.

Their respective opponents, Scott Thompson and Luke Delaney, were among the Roos' best.

"It's pretty clear that everyone wants to pin it on 'Dawesy' or 'Clokey'. It's not two blokes," Buckley said.

Recap Saturday's match.

"The whole side was poor tonight. I don't reckon we had any winners in their positions.

"I struggle to go through our 22 tonight and find a winner, and you're not going to win many games if that's the case."

Buckley said his players were out-muscled across the ground after they coughed up a four-goal start to trail by a point at quarter-time.

"I just felt that in crucial one-on-ones that North's body position and aggressiveness in those contests was a lot better than ours," he said.

"Dawes and Trav were out-positioned a number of times and some of that was because of the poor use going in but I thought others were because Thompson and Delaney in particular were able to out-position their men.

"If you can't get first access to the ball, you're going to struggle in this game."

North repeatedly capitalised when the Pies turned it over, and Collingwood failed to reciprocate as it struggled to move the ball fluently outside the first half of the opening term.

"They were far better in open space and their running was exceptional. I thought their ball use compared to ours was probably the major point of difference," Buckley said.

Buckley said an emotional let down from last Saturday night's thrilling eight-point win over the Sydney Swans couldn't be considered as the sole excuse.

"North had a pretty good win last week and they've come off six days [break]," Buckley said.

"The emotional side of things clearly has an impact and plays a part but you take that out of it and clearly both teams were coming off good wins last week and wanted to perform tonight.

"One team did and one team didn't."

Captain Nick Maxwell was subbed out at three-quarter time after suffering a knock in the hip flexor area.

Buckley said it would need assessment in 24 hours but conceded it was "serious enough to not want to risk him through that last quarter".

In better news, Alan Toovey - who was a late withdrawal with a corked thigh - and Dane Swan will play against West Coast at Patersons Stadium next Saturday while veteran defender Ben Johnson will be considered.

Johnson played his second game back from a shoulder reconstruction in the VFL on Saturday.

Jennifer Witham is a reporter for AFL Media. Follow her on Twitter @AFL_JenWitham

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs