They would be able to build a forward line around Darcy Moore for the next 10 years, Buckley said, also praising Adam Treloar for his stand-out performance in the centre.

But Ben Reid was unlikely to return to football this year. Instead he would take the time to recover from a knee injury.

The Pies worked together more coherently than they had much of the year and pushed the Doggies, a team headed for the finals, all match.

But Buckley was not overly enthusiastic about their performance, saying anything short of Friday night's standard was not good enough.

"We just lost a game of footy that we had every intention of winning, and could have, should have," he said.

Collingwood has been the subject of a lot of criticism recently – they lost by 15 points to another struggling side in Richmond last week and will not play finals this year.

"That's my challenge as senior coach of our coaching panel and leader of our footy program and it's [Scott Pendlebury's] challenge as our captain and senior leader of our playing group, to make sure what we saw tonight is the minimum standard," Buckley said.

Buckley compared Moore to Gold Coast's Tom Lynch and Melbourne's Jesse Hogan, as key forwards who were pivotal to their team's forward line.

"Darcy's a dangerous key forward, he's mobile, he's athletic, he always threatens in the air, but his contest at ground-level's pretty strong as well," he said.

"We'll build a forward line around Darcy over the next 10 years and he's ready to go now."

Getting Treloar to the club had been costly for the Pies, they sacrificed two first-round draft picks to poach him from Greater Western Sydney.

Buckley said Treloar should not be taking the heat of the negative appraisals of Collingwood, saying he was highly professional.

"He's just got great wheels, he's fast, he wins the ball inside, he can get outside," he said.

"We can clean up his use, he can make more of his touches but he just breaks the game up ... he'll be very important for us going forward."

An older forward Travis Cloke was dropped from the senior team again this week, after battling with poor form all year.

Rumours are rife that he will leave Collingwood at the end of the year, but Buckley said he hoped to keep him at the club.

Buckley said he was confident Cloke had worked as hard as possible at improving this season.

"The conversation with Trav all along has been to get him back to playing the best footy he can play," Buckley said.

The coach said he had been interested in trialling a smaller, quicker forward line.

"But I'm pretty confident that Trav can regain his confidence, regain his form and play some really good footy, and we expect that to be with us next year."