Winning the contested ball and stopping Lance Franklin's supply is the key to succeeding Friday night's qualifying final against Hawthorn, the Magpie camp believes.

The Pies will enter the match having not beaten the Hawks since last year's preliminary final.

More tellingly, in both their losses to Alastair Clarkson's men this season, they've been beaten in the contested ball stakes - 152 to 143 in round one, and 147 to 138 in round 17.

Recap collingwoodfc.com.au's live coverage of Thursday's training session.

Midfield coach Robert Harvey said both losses had been different but the reality remained the same; the Pies had to continue to win the contested possessions - which they easily did last Saturday night against Essendon - if they were to remain a chance.

"They like to move the ball, as everyone talks about, but last time we played them they beat us as the contest," Harvey said.

Harvey says Dawes remains in the mix for selection.

"That's what we pride ourselves on so we're starting there and working back from there.

"We're really confident in this group that they give great effort and we feel they'll give that tomorrow night.

"We've just got to clean up a few areas of our game, which we've been working on, and we feel confident we're heading in the right direction.

Preview Friday nights' match.

"Our best footy is hopefully to come. We feel like we've been building with that, the players have found a bit of form and I think we go in really confident we'll give a great contest."

More than one defender is expected to spend time on Franklin, who kicked five goals against them in round one and didn't play in the rematch.

Given the improved form of Travis Cloke against Essendon with the big Pie taking 16 marks and kicking five goals, the impact of the opposing power forwards is also destined to be influential. 

"It's going to be the icing on the cake, whoever competes well inside 50 but again, as most finals are, it's going to be won around that contest, around the ball," Harvey said.

"With a guy like Franklin, who's that good, you obviously want to restrict his impact and you throw in [Jarryd] Roughead, [Jack] Gunston, [Luke] Breust ... we've got to restrict the inside 50s against and we've got to compete well.

"The game is going to be really interesting like that."

The Pies believe Cloke will gather plenty of confidence from his performance last week, given he was not only able to find the goals but clunked marks after a lean month.

Still, Harvey said it was just as important there was an even spread of contribution from the team.

"[Cloke's form] is no more important that our key backs or our midfielders or whoever," he said.

"We like him playing like he did last week, there's no secret to that.

"It's not the be all and end all, we can win games either way, we just need that contest and that effort."

The squad from last week trained on Thursday, minus Tyson Goldsack who worked behind closed doors to try and get himself up from an ankle injury.

Brent Macaffer wasn't part of the session and Harvey said it was going to be hard for the forward - who had a knee reconstruction in February - to get back and play seniors this year.

But, he didn't completely rule it out.

"To be in a position where he can say he's available for selection at the moment is a credit to him," he said.

"Our VFL team isn't playing so that makes it more difficult for him but he's training, doing all the hard work to be picked."

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.