Collingwood veteran Scott Pendlebury will miss Thursday's clash with Hawthorn while captain Darcy Moore will return from a hamstring injury.

Pendlebury will be managed after his extraordinary Anzac Day performance against Essendon, with coach Craig McRae flagging that the five-day turnaround will be too quick for the 38-year-old.

"We had a conversation with him yesterday and he was pretty keen to miss this game, so he'll be managed," McRae told media on Tuesday.

"38-year-olds, five-day breaks, all those things but it's not reacting to this game, it was planned to some degree and I know the minutes going into the game we were conscious of and playing extra minutes in this game with an eye on not playing this week, but it was never completely ruling him out until we talked to the athlete."

The Pies skipper battled with a calf injury earlier this year, and was rushed back against GWS, only to injure his hamstring.

Pendlebury is set to play against Geelong, but McRae would not be drawn on what would occur thereafter.

The expectation is he will rest the following week against Sydney to enable him to break the record at the MCG against West Coast.

“Potentially, but have you got the Powerball numbers for me?" McRae quipped when asked about the plan for Pendlebury.

"It's hard to predict the future, we're just living in the moment of what is, he won't play this game, he'll play Geelong and we'll see where that goes and again we'll have conversations when that game's done about where his body is and we'll weigh up performance too - it's a delicate balance, this one.

"I've had some conversations with the executive team about this early days, and truthfully I said: 'can you just keep that on the other side of the building because we're here to perform and can we just get that right?'

"And there has to be plans for the future because there is all sorts of things going on behind the scenes to celebrate 'Pendles' because we don't want to miss that."

The Magpies great played significant game time in a timeless Anzac Day match which was celebrated internally, enabling teammates to play limited minutes once the result was sewn up.

McRae said there was little consideration given to limiting his minutes which may have opened up the prospect of him backing up off a five-day break.

Contested brute Ned Long looms as the obvious replacement for Pendlebury, having been managed on Anzac Day, but McRae stopped short of guaranteeing his return.

“There were some decisions made accordingly and we thought that (Anzac Day) in particular was going to be high transition and this will be a bit of both. It's hard to leave guys out because it's a big day, those conversations aren't easy to have but we've got Ned available," McRae said.

Moore returns to the senior side for the first time since Round 3 following an interrupted pre-season and start to the 2026 campaign.

The Pies match against the Hawks starts a run of three games against benchmark sides, with McRae indicating plans are in place to stop their weapons.

"Hawthorn is such a good intercepting team, critical to the way they play the game so how we move the ball can make that harder for them and then other parts of the game - how we defend the ground when they do have it," McRae said.

"They're the best team in the competition right now, I can see that from afar, we have a big challenge ahead of us, so it's another opportunity to see where we're at."

Meanwhile, McRae remained noncommittal to a timeline for Bobby Hill's AFL return, indicating the club will continue to review high performance numbers after he played 40 per cent game time in the VFL on the weekend.

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