COLLINGWOOD coach Mick Malthouse has admitted his team played "tight" football for most of the preliminary final against Hawthorn at the MCG on Friday night.

The Magpie mentor - who also said he expected to have a full list to choose from for the Grand Final - told SEN his team failed to attack through the corridor enough against the Hawks.

The Pies only just scraped through to the Grand Final, storming home in the final quarter to win by three points after trailing for most of the night.

Malthouse said, while the Magpies traditionally brought the ball forward via the boundary line, the team needed to attack through the corridor when the opportunity presented.

"I thought we played very tight football, [our] corridor players were free all day …. we do go to the boundary, yes, but when we're at our best, when we're running, we use the corridor as well as anyone," he said.

"I just thought we tightened up over the past three or four weeks to the point where we just haven't been using those blokes. They've been sitting there, we just haven't been finding them.

"It's not that we don't want to go there, sometimes there's a mindset of going safety-first - well, we don't have time for safety."

A relieved Malthouse said he expected the Pies to line up at full strength for the premiership decider, despite Darren Jolly (thigh), Nick Maxwell (rib), Ben Reid (upper leg) and Ben Johnson (calf) appearing proppy at times during the brutal preliminary final.

"Physically, they [the players] are all tired, but it's a great tiredness," he said.

"From a medical point of view, that [having every player available for selection] is the scenario. The boys tell me we should be pretty right.

"We've had 31 players training with us and you never know what might take place… [but] players 23 to 31 would need to train the house down [to get picked], because they haven't played recently."

More to come

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