Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley saw plenty of encouraging signs after giving the club’s raw players experience in the AFL pre-season competition in Sydney on Saturday.

But a serious knee injury to 2010 premiership player Brent Macaffer, who will undergo scans on an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), was Saturday night’s obvious downer for the Magpies.

Macaffer joins a lengthy injury list, with Alan Didak (adductor), Ben Johnson (hamstring), Harry O’Brien (hand) and Ben Reid (shoulder) headlining a list of players unavailable for the Blacktown clashes.

However, the absence of so many premiership players provided the perfect platform for untried talent to shine.

“NAB Cup is about finding out about the depth of your list,” Buckley said after his side’s wins over Western Bulldogs and Greater Western Sydney.

“All of our young blokes were up and about and will be better for the experience.”

Buckley singled out Jackson Paine, Peter Yagmoor, Jarrod Witts, Jonathon Ceglar, Shae McNamara and Marley Williams – all yet to play an AFL game – for praise.

Paine, a key forward taken with pick No.50 in last year’s draft, produced the highlight of the night when he calmly peeled off a spectacular match-winning goal from the boundary line in the three-point win over GWS.

The 18-year-old admitted there was a touch of luck.

“I was trying to square it up and do the team thing but in the end it looked selfish,” he told the club’s website.

“In the end I got the goal and it was pretty exciting. I hope my celebration wasn’t too `wankery’.”

Buckley was pleased with his charges’ first hit-out for the year.

“Obviously to get the wins was a major aim,” Buckley said.

“We expect to win every game we play. Perhaps some people would look at the squad and say perhaps that’s not the way we’ve selected the team.

“But ultimately we just needed those (young) players to get some experience playing their roles and I thought they did it pretty well.”

Aside from a physical mishap with his chair, Buckley was content with how his new coaching team fared in the official start to the post-Malthouse era.

“I had some trouble with my seat. I kept sitting forwards and backwards, so I was going a bit nuts at times.

“In the end, the communication was pretty good. We’re after a style of play that we’re trying to foster and it takes more than 80 minutes to be able to do that.

“But we’re encouraged by some young players that came in and played their roles very well.”