Collingwood Magpies head coach Craig McRae has applauded the way his side kicked away late against the West Coast Eagles in Perth on Saturday afternoon.

While always holding the lead of the match, Collingwood struggled to put the last-placed Eagles to the sword, and at one point even had a large lead cut back substantially.

They would ultimately run on the last eight goals of the game, only interrupted by a couple of West Coast behinds to kick away with a significant 63-point victory.

It leaves Collingwood alone at the top of the AFL ladder with 11 wins from 12 games, and a spot in September all but locked away at the halfway point of the season.

McRae said the way his side have been able to play out the full 120 minutes consistently this year has been pleasing, with opposition sides not able to stick to the challenge for the extended period.

"I'm going to sound boring, but we just want to play the minutes and we say that every game. To date, not many have been able to do that for 120 minutes against us," McRae said in hist post-game press conference.

"Our ability to run out games and trust our method has been pretty good for us.

"Fundamentally, if you want to break it down, our stoppage game got going. They dominated stoppages for pretty much the game, and in the last quarter, we got a bit back on that."

The coach acknowledged however that the Eagles had injury concerns throughout the game which hampered their ability to run out the game.

"As much as we want to say we played the minutes, that's unfortunate that they did lose a couple of players. In this current game, that's a huge cost. Talk about the quality of performance, it's difficult to have two rotating against a team that has others," McRae said.

McRae has injury issues of his own coming out of the game, with Will Hoskin-Elliott suffering an ankle injury and Beau McCreery no certainty of taking to the field next Monday afternoon against the Melbourne Demons in a King's Birthday clash.

"Will [Hoskin-Elliott] has a low grade ankle and will most likely be right. Beau [McCreery] might be touch and go. We will have to get a scan on that, because it's a little bit worse than Will's," McRae said on the injured duo.