Snubbing suggestions he wants his team to play entertaining football, Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has reaffirmed the Magpies' commitment to a "bold and aggressive and dynamic" style as they prepare to tackle the league's premier side.

The Magpies will leave for Perth on Wednesday, ahead of Thursday night's intriguing battle against the top-placed Fremantle Dockers - a unit that has dropped just the one match this season.

Buckley says the fourth-placed Magpies have banished listening to, or reading, media commentary about just where they lay in the AFL pecking order, with some suggesting their 8-3 record has been inflated by a friendly fixture.

However, Buckley understands the young Magpies' development will be harshly scrutinised during the stand-alone Thursday night clash against the league's stingiest defensive unit and a man - Nat Fyfe - now considered arguably the game's best player.

"All of the questions - where are we going to get tested, where we have been good - there is clearly a lot of interest of where we are going to stack up in this particular week, and the things that we have done well in the first half of the year, whether we [can] replicate it against a side like Fremantle," Buckley said on Tuesday.

"In the end, that will be a little bit of us, and a little bit of them and a lot about how the game pans out. The start becomes crucial.

"We think we have been a good contested ball side. We face the best clearance and stoppage side in the competition, statistically."

Buckley was asked whether he had set out this year for the Magpies to display an entertaining style. Their run and carry and deep kicking inside 50 has been attractive - but the entertainment factor was not on the agenda of a hard-edged competitor like Buckley.

"We don't want to put a cap on our creativity. We believe we are an aggressive side but we think we are a smart ball-using side," he said. "We made the statement at the beginning of the year that we wanted to be bold and aggressive and dynamic with our offence and add to that a really hard-nosed attitude in contest and defence. Entertaining is not a word that enters our mind when we go about what we are doing."

The Magpies will be without frontline ruckman Brodie Grundy as he recovers from whiplash. Buckley said it could be anywhere from a week to a month before he resumes.

"He is coming along really well. He has been doing a lot of work in the gym - still has got the brace on. That is due to come off in a couple of days," he said. "We'll probably know a little bit more after that."

This means Jarrod Witts will take on dominant Dockers giant Aaron Sandilands, with Jesse White providing support.

The Magpies will also need to find a way of curbing Fyfe, who has emerged as a modern-day version of Anthony Koutoufides.

Buckley noted that Fyfe had been so good he had accrued 90 out of a possible 110 votes given by the senior coaches in their own AFL Coaches Association award.

"He is a tough match up. He is a big unit. He loves getting momentum at stoppage. He is dominant in the air," he said.

"He is a smart player and knows where to use his energy and when ... but we are not going to fall into the trap of looking at one or two players."

The Magpies weighed up whether to give star utility Ben Reid his first senior match of the year, Levi Greenwood his first senior match at his new club and father-son draftee Darcy Moore his debut, but have opted to keep the same group that defeated Greater Western Sydney before the mid-season break.