The Pies’ might already be preparing for their 2013 finals campaign after winning five of their last six encounters, however Gold Coast SUNS assistant coach Matthew Primus says the Gold Coasters aren’t about to make life easy for the Magpies, saying the home side need to build on an  impressive first-half of the season, encouraging the playing group to do what it takes to capture the Premiership points up for grabs on Saturday afternoon.

“We’re certainly looking forward to it, we know Collingwood have their eye towards finals and we’re looking to take down one of the powerhouses of the competition, and to do that we’re going to have to play a lot better than we have been,” he said.

“They always bring with them a big following so it’s going to be a massive Saturday afternoon of football.”

With Buckley’s star-studded roster ranking among the competition leaders for marks inside-50, and with Travis Cloke leading all comers in the statistical count, Primus says the GCSUNS defenders will need to be at their ferocious best to ensure the Magpies aren’t gifted easy scoring opportunities.

“They’re a really dangerous team, they generate a lot of the ball and manage to deliver a lot of entries inside-50,” Primus said.

“They score at a pretty good rate and also hold teams to good scores, so our challenge will be to counter that.”

Rory Thompson looks certain to take his spot at the Centre Half-Back position and be given the task of containing Collingwood’s star forward, with goldcoastfc.com.au reporting during the week that the inform defender had been cleared of any serious injury after being stretched off during the side’s Round 16 clash against Richmond following a heavy collision midway through the third quarter.

“Rory did a fantastic job on Jack Reiwoldt last week before going down with that knock,” he said.

“He has come up fine with no broken bones in his chest, which is great news for us because we’ll definitely need him against Collingwood this week.”