Senior Coach Craig McRae has addressed the media ahead of Saturday's Preliminary Final against the Brisbane Lions.
McRae touched on some team selection calls, some of the opposition's most damaging players, and the benefit of the week off.
Small forward won't play
"Bobby won't play. We've made a decision on that," he said.
"I told him before training, just based on a lot of little things. The conversations were hard for him to hear but it's the reality of where we're at right now with his preparation.
"Credit to him, he trained really, really well and that shows how far he's come in the last period. He's working hard to get back and this is not permanent as I said to him, it's not permanent, but this week he's not available."
If Hill could play should the Pies progress to the Grand Final
"I'd like to think so," McRae said.
"I don't want to take away hope for the young lad and he's progressing towards that.
"I mentioned that to him to 'please keep training well, keep turning up, keep being here and being present and keep getting better everyday' as we always say and maybe there'll be a world where that could be true."
Update on Howe
"Howey's going to ask a lot of questions too, we're going to go to match committee and make a decision on him," he said.
"We're going to marry up all of his loads and how much he's been able to do in recent time and we'll decide this afternoon (if he plays).
"We've got to weigh up right now is he 'fit to play or fit to perform?'.
"That's been our mantra all year based on lessons learnt last year and the high performance team will present those numbers in front of us around loads and other things and then we've just got to weigh up what's best for the team this week."
Mihocek and Cox
"Brody (Mihocek) will play. It's hard to keep him out of the team, even on the training track he's out there training really well this week," he said.
"He's fit and available.
"Mason (Cox) will play. We'll be reasonably unchanged, we'll just decide what we do around Howey and whether he's fit to play or fit to perform."
How to quell a key Lions pair's influence
"We've always got a plan for Harris (Andrews)," he said.
"Whether we start that way or we got to him when he's maybe hurting us a bit, he's such an incredible intercept marker and sets up a lot of their defence.
"We'll have some plan around what his influence can be.
"It's hard to tackle him (Cam Rayner). They've got many threats and we're going to have to have a really good system in place."
The benefit of the week off
"Our best historically has been when we've got a bit of a break," he said.
"We saw that this year we had three games in 12 days and we looked really tired against the Hawks (in Round 22).
"We've been pretty deliberate from then to making sure our list is really sharpening the sword towards this game and the coming weeks if we're lucky enough to make it that far."
The emotion of a Prelim
"It's always the hardest game of the year to win the Prelims, I feel," he said.
"The neutral crowd somewhat - ideally we get a bit more than that this week against Brisbane.
"Everything matters. It's such a big outcome for the winner and a huge loss for the loser.
"There's such huge incentives to just go for it and we're excited for that. It's not our first Prelim for a lot of the guys in the building and we know the excitement that brings."
