FORWARD line coach Dan McPherson says the players and coaches understand the significance of Monday’s Queen’s Birthday clash against Collingwood at the MCG, particularly with the ‘Big Freeze at the ‘G’ element added to the annual blockbuster this year.

McPherson said the club was determined to help support former coach Neale Daniher and the Big Freeze at the ‘G cause to help find a cure for motor neurone disease (MND).

“It’s a massive game for us. Neale Daniher’s involved and it’s really important as well, particularly for our club,” he told Dee TV.

“As everyone saw, he came in and visited us a couple of weeks ago, which was fantastic.

“As a club and individually, we’re chucking our support behind Neale and the cause against MND (motor neurone disease), so hopefully there will be a lot of people who turn up.

“We’ll see a few celebrities and journos getting chucked into the ice bucket, so that should be a bit of fun and then on top of that, hopefully the boys perform really well.”

McPherson said the nine-day break was important leading into the match, given the Demons played in the warmer Northern Territory conditions last round.

“We traveled back from Alice Springs, so the boys need a bit more time with a bit of heat up there. They need a little bit more time to recover from that game, so the extra couple of days come in handy for them,” he said.

“There’s some light training sessions the first couple of days and then we’ll ramp things up Thursday and train again on Saturday, and tune them up for Monday.

“We’ll take advantage of a couple of extra days after nine/10 weeks into the season – they probably need a bit of a break – so it works in well.”

McPherson said Collingwood’s effort to come back from a 39-point deficit against North Melbourne at the MCG last Sunday was an outstanding effort. And he added that the Demons knew exactly what to expect from the Pies.

“We went and had a look at them on the weekend and they started a bit slowly, but they showed a lot of fight and they were really dangerous,” he said.

“They kicked a lot of goals in a row and they’ve got dangerous players all over the ground.”