Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse has no qualms about St Kilda again using a third-man up tactic in the ruck, claiming his team ended up benefiting from the ploy in last weekend's drawn grand final.

The early loss of Michael Gardiner to injury last week forced the Saints to pinch-hit Justin Koschitzke with Jason Blake in the ruck against Magpies tap specialist Darren Jolly and Leigh Brown.

Although Jolly finished with 32 hit-outs, the Saints still won the taps 45-39 and clearances 43-42, with Brendon Goddard (five hit-outs), Lenny Hayes (three), Nick Riewoldt (two) and Nick Dal Santo (one) helping tip the ledger St Kilda's way in their role as third man up.

St Kilda may rely on a more traditional set-up this week after recalling ruckman Ben McEvoy but Malthouse said he didn't mind if the Saints again employed the third-man up tactic in an attempt to nullify Jolly.

"You've got to see the outcome. I think sometimes we look at the immediate without looking at the end result," a relaxed Malthouse said on Friday.

"A classical case, and this will be an Adelaide thing, was (former Crows coach) Gary Ayres was criticised unbelievably for one-on-one (tactics at) kick-offs.

"Everyone got their first kick away but they couldn't get their second kick away and very few scored from it.

"But everyone looked at that and said 'geez Gary Ayres has no idea, they (the opposition) are getting the first kick outside 50'.

"But they don't look at the next ball that keeps coming back.

"Now we can look at third man up, but we look at the third man up and a lot of that ball comes straight back to us.

"It's easy to say they got it (from the stoppage) but what's the next phase of it?

"In fact I think we scored 3.4 and they scored 2.4 (from stoppages)."

Malthouse conceded his team needed to be more competitive in the air if they were to have a greater impact on the scoreboard.

"We've just got to be better in taking our opportunities and perhaps being far more competitive in the air, which we haven't been and weren't last week," he said.

"Our contested marks were down, their contested marks were up.

"We've just got to be better in the air.

"We've gone almost 40-odd weeks of playing the structures that we are very comfortable with. we are not going to change the structures ... some of the strategies, they will be changed marginally simply because they are addressed on a weekly issue."

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