COLLINGWOOD coach Craig McRae says he hopes Nick Daicos' calf improves over the coming days, but he's only guessing, after the champion midfielder's dramatic late withdrawal against Brisbane on Thursday night.

Daicos was removed from the Magpies team just 20 minutes before the opening bounce after twice trying to warm up, and failing, at the Gabba.

LIONS v MAGPIES Full match coverage and stats

McRae said he "absolutely" had the intention of playing Daicos, but the corked calf that dogged him all week had other ideas.

"We gave it every chance to improve, and he gets out here and we thought he'd start improving, but he didn't," McRae said following his team's 54-point loss to the Lions.

"That's where it landed.

"We hope it improves. We have three days off, and are back in on Monday.

"He's such a pro. It's a corkie, you'd think it starts to move, I don't know … we'll see how that goes."

Without Daicos in their midfield, the Magpies were trounced by the two-time defending premiers, beaten 42-24 at clearances and 131-92 at contested ball.

But McRae was unwilling to use Daicos' late withdrawal as an excuse.

"I hope it doesn't (make a difference) because I’m sitting there as calm as anything saying, 'You're not playing. Next. Ed Allan, you're coming in to play a role, you're ready to go, let's go.'

"You'd hope it doesn't because things that happen before the game shouldn't really affect the first contest or our stoppage structure. They shouldn't.

"I know you could make the case you take your best player out of any team it's probably going to disrupt, but you'd like to think not.

"Honestly, I felt like we got outplayed most of the night.

"I just want to give credit to them.

"It's early in the year and you get a bit of a wake-up call on a couple of parts of our game, stoppage is clearly one. We've got some work to do."

Collingwood has eight days until it plays Fremantle at Adelaide Oval as part of Gather Round next Friday night, with McRae saying he expected veteran Scott Pendlebury to return from his grumbly Achilles.

Brisbane coach Chris Fagan was beaming following the win, describing it as an even, four-quarter performance.

Missing co-captains Harris Andrews (suspension) and Hugh McCluggage (calf), the Lions were dominant in each facet of the game, cutting up the usually staunch Magpies defence.

"I thought we played fantastic footy," Fagan said.

"It felt like we could have won by a little bit more, to be honest. 

"I don't mean to sound greedy, but we did play exceptionally well in all the facets, whether it be contest, team defence, our offence was outstanding. It was great."

While Andrews and Noah Answerth (concussion) will return for next weekend's match against North Melbourne, Fagan said there was still a question mark over McCluggage.

"It'll be line ball with him," he said.

"If he is all right, we might be able to manage him on the bench. We'll just wait and see.

"You don't want to rush a guy like him back and make a mistake and then he has a setback."