Collingwood coach Craig McRae remains “unashamed” of his plan to rest Scott Pendlebury again so he can play his record-breaking match at the MCG.

The Magpies suffered a 54-point loss to Geelong on Saturday night and their season hangs in the balance ahead of facing ladder leaders Sydney next week.

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But McRae is happy to stay on course to celebrate Pendlebury’s games’ record against West Coast Eagles in a home game the following week. The 38-year-old equalled Brent Harvey’s haul of 432 games against Geelong and will break the record against West Coast in a fornight.

“No Scott won’t play next week, we’re unashamed in our plans to play him the week after all going to plan with his body,” McRae said.

“This is a plan we stick to, high-performance but also rewarding and celebrating one of the greats of our game.

“We’re excited for what that looks like in a couple of weeks time, we’ll sit in this now and have a shallow loss, dust ourselves off quickly and get up to Sydney, put on a good performance for our fans because it wasn’t good enough tonight.

“We’re excited for that but at the appropriate time we’ll make sure we celebrate Pendle’s for what it is.

“We’ll pick 23 fit players who will go up there and play the Swans, who again will be a good challenge for us but we’re here to hit those things front on and put on a performance our fans will be proud of.”

Pendlebury wasn’t in a mood to discuss the games record in his post-game interview with Jack Riewoldt on Kayo Sports, rushing off to give Geelong’s Tom Stewart a guard of honour in his 200th game.

“This is the easy part, I just get to come out and play,” Pendlebury said.

“I just stick to that process every week, you just try to stack games because you want to play good footy and it’s so good to be out here. It’s no different with my thought process.

“It is what it is. Just disappointing we played how we played tonight.

Asked about the fanfare surrounding the milestone, he replied: “To be honest, I haven’t seen much of it. We’ve got a program we do. No offence to the people out there, but I don’t really watch a heap of the footy shows or stuff like that.

“You can look that far forward, I’m looking forward to try and recover tonight, get a decent sleep and see how I pull up tomorrow

“People are forgetting it’s not just one more game and it’s done, I’m excited for it but I’m going to get going, we’re lining up for Tommy Stewart.”

Commentator Anthony Hudson said: “You did your best Jack, Pendles with his eye on doing the right thing by Tom Stewart.”

In commentary on ABC Radio, Brent Harvey said: “I don’t know how I feel, I’m OK with it.

“Nothing changes in my life. It’s good to have that sort of recognition but if I’m going to live my life because I’ve played the most games of AFL and want that recognition, I live a pretty vain sort of life.

“I’m the North Melbourne games record holder and nothing changes too much there, so I’m pretty happy.

“If you’re picking someone in the AFL to do it, you’re probably picking Scott. Just the little things you hear that he does. He’s so consistent for so long.

“I wish it was next week to be honest so it’s over and done with.”

Next week against the Sydney Swans, Collingwood will be without the leadership of both Pendlebury and captain Darcy Moore, who sustained a concussion prior to the halftime siren.

Moore collided heavily with Geelong midfielder Oisin Mullin and was ruled out during the main break.

The loss of Pendlebury further complicates the Magpies’ struggle with centre clearances – an issue McRae admits is continuing “to be a major concern for us”.

“Six goals tonight (from centre bounce) is just not at a level against teams like Geelong, we can’t afford to have that,” he said.

“The numbers balance around, it was pretty even, I think it was 13-apiece but it’s a little bit of inability to stop scoring out of that source.

“Then I thought we were really challenged around our defensive system, it’s the first time this year we really got challenged around our mechanics of that.

“They took over 20 marks inside 50, that suggests we’re not defending that area as good as we can or a level we have been all year.”

Originally published as Scott Pendlebury in no mood to discuss breaking AFL games record