AN "EMBARRASSED" Collingwood last night lost young star Scott Pendlebury with a broken foot, as the Brisbane Lions inflicted the club's biggest defeat of the season and kept their own slight finals hopes simmering with a fourth consecutive win.

Pendlebury may miss the rest of the season after hobbling off early in the 93-point thrashing, which coach Mick Malthouse described as shocking, and said he had sensed coming before the match.

Malthouse said only one player — four-goal forward Nick Maxwell — had played anywhere near his best and that the players would be given no credit for having fought out every other game so far this season.

"We were embarrassed. It was a shocking performance, quite frankly," said Malthouse after the loss, which moved the Lions to within a game of the top eight and was the Magpies' worst defeat since the Western Bulldogs won their round-eight clash by 33 points.

Collingwood will play Carlton at the MCG this week, while the Lions must beat at least four of their next five opponents — the Kangaroos, Hawthorn, Sydney, Adelaide and Geelong — to book a spot in September.

"That was clearly our worst game. We wouldn't want to be doing too many more of those. When you're like that, it's hard to get a gauge on the playing group because clearly the performance was like a domino effect. But there's no prisoners in this. We're out there to win every game we play and we're going to be playing a game next week against a side that last week played poorly against Brisbane and this week almost got over the top coming from well behind.

"We just can't go in there and say, 'We hope everyone is switched on', because clearly a couple of players are starting to drag their feet a bit. Perhaps it's tiredness, perhaps they've been up for so long, but we have to re-address that."

Malthouse, who watched Brisbane record its highest score against Collingwood — 22.17 to 7.14 — said "coach's intuition" had told him his side was in for an ordinary night.

The Lions — driven by dominant midfielders Simon Black, Jed Adcock and Nigel Lappin — posted a new biggest winning margin over the Magpies, having previously won by 78 points during 2005. Jared Brennan kicked seven goals and Adcock scored four, while Jonathan Brown added three.

"There was no real defining moment, it was just coach's feel. Parents feel it, coaches feel it. I get it as a coach," Malthouse said.

"I look and see and I reckon I've got it right most times. You think, 'We're in for a big day' or 'We're in for an ordinary day', no matter what you do. It's not want, it's maybe that the planets have simply been re-aligned. I don't know what it is, perhaps it's a sense you have and it just didn't gel with me before the game.

"I'm sure most coaches that have been coaching long enough would get that feel. You just think, 'It's going to be hard work today'."

Brisbane coach Leigh Matthews — who believed four wins probably would clinch his side a finals spot — said the best thing about the Lions' four-win run was that it proved to his players that they formed a high-quality side.

"The most exciting thing is that this group of players have proved that they've got a high level of football in them," he said. "They proved that in the first bit of the year and again this last month.

"We certainly didn't do that in the middle part of the year. We've stabilised the win-loss ratio, but we haven't done well enough to be better than that. But I said to the guys after the game, 'The pressure is on you now because you've proved you can play a fairly high level'. To come and do that to a good Collingwood side at the MCG is not going to happen too often."