Geelong captain Cameron Ling believes Collingwood's failure to advance beyond a preliminary final in the past three seasons will count for little when the teams meet on Friday night for the right to contest the 2010 AFL grand final.
The Cats edged the Magpies by five points en route to the premiership in 2007 and decisively by 73 in a preliminary final last season, but Ling argues that all parties have moved on in the past 12 months.
"Both teams are playing a different type of footy," said Ling ahead of training at Skilled Stadium on Wednesday morning.
"It's hard to compare it to last year."
"I would love to say that's going to count and we're going to have the same result, but it just doesn't work that way."
"It's what happens on the night."
Ling said Geelong took something from both of this year's clashes with the Pies - a 30-point win in Round 9 and, especially, the 22-point loss in Round 19 when the Cats were held to just three goals after half-time.
"I think we learned a bit from that night," he said.
"They played some really good footy against us and we knew that if we wanted to hopefully run into them again later on in the year that we had to improve in a couple of areas."
"In that Collingwood game there were things that we did well, but you've always got to look to improve because if you stop improving the other teams go flying past you pretty quickly."
Asked how it felt to go in as underdogs against the minor premiers coming off last Friday night's semi-final win over the Dockers, Ling said: "I couldn't have told you what the odds were or whether we're favourites or not this week or last week."
"We know that we're preparing the same way as we do every week."
"We reviewed the (Fremantle) game the same as we always would and we learned some stuff from it, we were happy with some aspects of the game and not happy with other parts."
"We've just got to prepare for us to play our best possible footy."
"We have that confidence that if we can play our best possible football for the entire game, in the end the result will look after itself."
"Going in as favourites or underdogs doesn't come into our calculations."
Ling said he had no concerns with the form of All-Australian defender Harry Taylor who struggled to keep a rein on Nick Riewoldt a fortnight ago, and said premiership defender Andrew Mackie, who was dumped for the Dockers clash, would be ready to go if selected for Friday.
"His attitude's been fantastic since he was told by 'Bomber' that he was dropped," said Ling of Mackie.
"He took it on the chin, he jumped straight back into his training and he's been involved in everything as far as preparing for games as though he's ready to play."
"He's giving himself the best possible chance to play and if he does get a game I think he'll play some really good footy."
Ling said the Cats had coped well with having to qualify via a semi-final this season following the first-up loss to St Kilda.
"We took that as a bit of a challenge that it's going to be different to the other years, but I suppose every finals series is different," he said.
"We had to make sure we got over Freo last week and we were happy with the way we played and I think we're well prepared to take on Collingwood and give it our best shot."