It's an entry in the AFL record books that's so incongruous it forces a second glance. Can it really be right that Collingwood, league colossus, financial powerhouse and 15-time day premier, has only won one pre-season competition in 55 years?

Tommy Hafey was coach, Ray Shaw captain and the competition known as the Escort Cup when the Pies beat Hawthorn by 28 points at Waverley in 1979. And that remains the club's only success since the pre-season competition was inaugurated in 1956.

They've made three grands finals since then - including that infamous night in 1980 when Kerry Good's kick after the siren gave North Melbourne a lucky win - but through the Foster's, Ansett, Wizard, NAB and every other incarnation of pre-season Cup, the Pies have basically not been a factor.

Fitzroy has won more pre-season titles, as have Port Adelaide. Which is just weird.

In fact, Collingwood's win-loss record in the minor competition, until the start of this current NAB Cup, was 31-42 at a success rate of 42%. In the season proper since 1897, that figure is 60.6%.

I know, Pies' supporters will already be tapping away at their keyboards to point out that they haven't been trying all those years. That the pre-season comp is a piddling, irrelevant competition best left to the smaller clubs to squabble over. Maybe that's right.

Certainly it has never been treated with much importance by Mick Malthouse. Like a mad professor in a science lab, he prefers to use it for experimentation.

In his 26 years as coach at Footscray, West Coast and Collingwood, Malthouse has never steered a team to a pre-season flag. The best he has done is make the grand final twice, with Collingwood in 2003 and 2009 - when they were flogged by Geelong by 76 points - but that's about it.

And it's not as if they've been going full-bore in this campaign either. At the weekend, the Woods blooded their American rookie, the 204cm Shae McNamara, against Sydney. And they rested Norm Smith Medallist Scott Pendlebury. And Matthew Lappin was marshalling the troops as stand-in coach while Mick waxed his moustache at home.

But having reached the semi-final, and a date on Saturday against an eminently beatable West Coast side in Perth, the Maggies are now $2 favourites with the TAB to win the competition, ahead of their 2010 Grand Final rivals St Kilda (who play Essendon in the first semi-final on Friday) at $3.

And with president Eddie McGuire complaining on radio today about the injustice of Collingwood having to travel to Perth for the semi-final, one senses Magpie coaches, players and officials are now starting to get serious about this. They will now be working hard at doubling that tally of pre-season triumphs - and filling in one of the few gaps in the Malthouse CV.