COLLINGWOOD coach Mick Malthouse believes the Magpies' second-half fightback against Adelaide shows they have the ability to beat Geelong in the second preliminary final next Saturday night at the MCG.

Malthouse said the five-point win over the Crows, which came after the Pies trailed by as much as 32 points in the second quarter, gave him belief he had the players to match it with the Cats in seven days time.

"We know it was a terrific win. It gets us to a preliminary final," he said.

"You don't get to a preliminary final unless you do things right. We did enough things right tonight against a terrific football side to challenge Geelong next week, and challenge them we will.

"We'll weigh up our week, get it right if we possibly can, and then we'll sit back and analyse what happened with the reserves ... and where we're at with the four boys that were out injured, and see whether we need to make adjustments.

"We unashamedly have to pick sides to win on the day, not on the year. So, we'll pick the best side for Geelong."

Saturday night's match was played in balmy 30-degree heat, which Malthouse conceded could dictate a different recovery plan than usual this week.

"I'll talk to [head of conditioning] David Buttifant about that. That's a science area, so we'll go through that," he said.

"Those doubters of global warming … come to Melbourne."

Malthouse said the first half of the game was played on the Crows' terms, and that the Magpies had to reassess their game plan when they went into the rooms at the main break.

"Whatever we did, we didn't seem to do it right, and they seemed to get most things right," he said.

"In the second quarter, we really just needed to break even. We just had to tidy it up, no more damage, and come in at halftime and just re-assess.

"We were comprehensively poor in a number of things, but more importantly, we were getting beaten in two areas we needed to address.

"Some things you do come off, and some don't. We were fortunate to fix the two things we needed to fix, reload the pressure back and give us a chance to reverse the score."

He said he had every faith in John Anthony, who had failed to kick a goal all game, to boot the sealer at the 30-minute mark of the final term once he'd won a free kick from Ben Rutten.

"I'm normally the pessimist in the box, but I thought Jack could knock it over," he said.

"I didn't want to go through that drawn final again. We've had one of those, and we didn't need it. I didn't need it.

"I was quite comfortable that Jack had it, and I was quite comfortable that barring a total kick into the man … I was actually hoping he'd take another 15 seconds, quite frankly, to take as much off that clock as possible."

Malthouse applauded his young brigade that again stood up on the big stage, with Brent Macaffer, Steele Sidebottom, Brad Dick and Cameron Wood playing well under extreme pressure.