It was the first time this year the Super Netball pre-season premiership favourites had strung together back-to-back wins in an ominous sign for the rest of the competition with superstars Sharni Layton, Caitlin Thwaites and Madi Robinson all playing close to their best games of the year.

After the Easter break and a tumultuous week off the court where players threatened industrial action, it was the Magpies who started strongest and from there they never trailed.

They led by seven points at one stage but the Giants staged a superb fightback to level the scored midway through the fourth quarter in front of 10,571 fans at the Qudos Bank Arena double header before just running out of legs.

"It's really frustrating, in various stages through the match we launched great fight backs and when we got level I thought we were there but we just didn't do enough earlier on," Giants coach Julie Fitzgerald said.

"In the first half of the match we just had patches where we weren't getting our hands on the ball defensively and making a few errors attacking wise.

"In the second quarter we allowed them to get to the circle edge far too easily, that puts far too much pressure on your circle defenders.

"I was proud of the fact that you can get five down against a quality team like Collingwood and fight your way back. I've got no doubt if the match had been a few more minutes we might have fought it back again."

Thwaites was superb for the Magpies finishing with 48 goals in an enthralling battle with Giants youngster Sam Poolman.

Layton's battle with English import Jo Harten was also a highlight, the Giants goal shooter finishing with 30 goals.

Sunshine Coast and Melbourne Vixens now share top billing in the Super Netball, the latter having beaten the Swifts 62-54 to effectively end NSW's season.

The Giants are a point adrift while the Magpies remain fourth with five wins.

"They've improved a lot and I think the Easter break would've come at a really good time for them, they would've been quite buoyant after their last win," Fitzgerald said.

"I knew that they'd come out really hard and really want to consolidate their spot in the four with Firebirds winning last night they would be a desperate team today."

The Swifts remain second from bottom with just the one win, and will potentially be without Diamond Paige Hadley next week as she continues to recover from the knee injury that ruled her out of the Vixens game.

"She's our only Diamond, and she's a big loss at both ends of the court because she's also been defending really well," coach Rob Wright said.

"She got a knock to the back of the knee a couple of weeks ago so we're just assessing it. We're not sure whether she'll be back next week or not, we're hoping so but there's probably no guarantees."

Sam Wallace was superb for the Swifts once more finishing with 37 goals, as did Vixens superstar Mwai Kumwenda.

"Vixens are showing some class, I think they're getting quite ruthless," Wright said.

"Every team was a little bit scrappy after the bye break in all four matches but I thought they actually showed their skills hold up really well under all sorts of pressure.

"We showed some really good patches but again, we're still after that consistency. The one area I thought we probably didn't do very well today was when we won ball, and it's hard to win ball off the Vixens, I didn't think we cherished it enough.

"We probably gave them too much of it back where I felt they punished us a bit better than we punished them on ball they won.