Collingwood have already forecast a coaching spot at the club for departing skipper Scott Burns, who has retired confident he had squeezed everything possible from his battle-scarred body.

Burns, who captained the side in 2008, is set to move quickly to an assistant coaching position at another club.

And Magpies coach Mick Malthouse said he hoped the 33-year-old Burns and the man he succeeded as captain, Nathan Buckley, would eventually make their way back to Collingwood.

"Scott will probably move on and be an assistant coach at some other football club and perhaps be trying to plan the downfall of our club against his," Malthouse said on Monday.

"That's life in the fast lane. When people like this move on they get more experience."

But he said that after the loss this year of assistant coach Guy McKenna to head up the new Gold Coast franchise and development coach Alan Richardson, who moved to Essendon, Collingwood could lure a former star back.

"Who knows, down the track a Scott Burns-type, a Nathan Buckley, will perhaps come back and coach the club or be in another capacity," Malthouse said.

"We don't want to lose our good Collingwood people but I think Burnsy's on the right track.

"You go out and get as much experience as you can from other organisations and hopefully, instead of an exodus from here that we've seen from people coming here, coaching and going out and coaching other clubs, we'll bring someone back eventually."

Burns, who retired after 264 games and a lengthy battle with injuries this year, said he was now ready to consider coaching offers.

"Obviously there will be a few decisions with myself and my family in the next few weeks," he said.

"I love the industry, I'd love to stay involved.

"We've kept pretty quiet really in terms of making contact with too many people but now I've officially retired it's a matter of sitting down and discussing things and finding out where we'll go from there.

"I guess that's the next step. In a lot of ways it's exciting. I've been here for 14 years now and this is all I've ever known," he said.

"It would be nice to go somewhere different and just see how things operate elsewhere."

A lingering calf problem forced him to miss the club's two finals this season - a win against Adelaide and a loss to St Kilda.

"There were a few things, just structurally - not so much the soft tissue - back and neck and hip, that you notice as you get older and I just knew I was really close to completely stopping," Burns said.

"I just didn't want to go to the well once too often."

He revealed he had the best interests of the club at heart and did not want to play on while not fully fit.

"You want to leave something when you leave the place. This time next year, you could easily go out and nearly have a detrimental effect to the team and the players if you're not quite up to it," he said.

Burns was drafted at No.90 in the 1992 AFL draft and made his debut in round one, 1995, against Carlton.

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