Veteran defender Shane Wakelin says Collingwood can't afford to be too conscious of Hawthorn forward Lance Franklin when the teams clash on Saturday at the MCG.

Franklin may be coming off his worst display of the season, having kicked a wasteful 1.7 in Sunday's 12-point win over Richmond, but Wakelin knows that just shutting him down won't guarantee the Magpies prevent the Hawks kicking a winning score.

"He's one of six very important players in their forward line … as we saw last week Jarryd Roughead really stood up and kicked five and we know (Mark) Williams has been a consistent goal-kicker over a long period of time," Wakelin said on Tuesday.

"They've got more than one string to their bow."

Set for his 239th AFL game on Saturday which will bring up a combined tally of 500 matches between he and his twin brother Darryl, who played 261 matches with St Kilda and Port Adelaide, Wakelin doesn't expect coach Mick Malthouse to hand him the tough job on the man they call Buddy.

"I wouldn't think so no," he said with a laugh. "But you never say never. I actually played on Buddy in his first year when he was quite raw and only a young and experienced lad, which was enjoyable."

Satisfied by the milestone, which he believes 'reflects his longevity' and 'ability to persevere' at the top level, Wakelin hopes both skipper Scott Burns and key forward Anthony Rocca are ready to return.

Burns has missed the past three matches with a calf injury, putting on hold his 250th appearance for the Magpies, and Wakelin isn't overly confident that his fellow South Australian will be back.

"All the signs are pretty positive," he said. "It's a difficult thing, he obviously did one at the start of pre-season so he'll be quite conservative with it I would imagine and so will the physios and doctors."

"We're confident he will but then I suppose there's a week break afterwards and it gives you an opportunity to freshen up on that particular week as well. He knows his body better than anyone so he'll make the decision at the end of the week."

Rocca meanwhile was ruled out of last Friday's Anzac Day win over Essendon by an ankle injury, and Wakelin is more confident one of the team's key players will return.

"We're pretty positive about Anthony," he said. "He's still got three or four days to get up and get some good conditioning in the legs over the next couple of days so we're pretty positive from that point of view."

"I think he's still in our top five most important players at the football club and he takes a very good defender and he's still No.1 in contested marks in the competition. Any player who can take contested marks is still critically important."

And Wakelin can't speak highly enough of young defender Nathan Brown, who he felt an immediate connection with because both are identical twins with siblings also involved in the game.

"The great thing about Nathan is he's got a great ability to learn," he said. "He's a really respectful young kid and he loves hard work. If you have those attributes you're going to succeed more often than not over a long period of time."

"He's been fantastic and more importantly from my point of view it's allowed me to free up on the second and third talls which is handy as well."