West Coast coach Andrew McQualter says they’ve turned to the club’s physiologist to help them prepare to face Collingwood in front of more than 90,000 fans at the MCG on Saturday.

The Eagles — who have adopted the name Waalitj Marawar for Sir Doug Nicholls round — are set to play in front of their biggest home-and-away crowd ever, as tens of thousands of Magpies fans turn out to celebrate club great Scott Pendlebury’s record-breaking game.

It is set to be an intimidating task for McQualter’s young outfit, with nine of their 23 not having ever played at the MCG let alone in front of such a big, parochial crowd.

The previous biggest home-and-away crowd the Eagles have played in front of was 62,957 who turned out to watch them play the Magpies at the MCG in round 13 of 2012.

McQualter said it was “business as usual” despite the incredible build-up to the Saturday afternoon affair.

“We’ve embraced the fact that it will be a big crowd. We’ve spoken about it, we’ve used our sports psych yesterday to speak about it with our players, what the environment will be like,” he said.

“We’ve had some players play in big games, but a lot of our players haven’t played in an MCG game of this crowd size so we’ve just talked through it but from a preparation point of view it’s been exactly the same. It’s going to be a great opportunity.

“It’s exciting, it’s an awesome opportunity. You’ve got to win big finals at the MCG, that’s what our competition’s about. We get a look at a big game at the ‘G, some of our young players get their first taste of it and we can’t wait.”

The Eagles are coming off an upset 17-point win against Greater Western Sydney that was built off a brilliant game from Harley Reid and some strong tactical moves by McQualter.

One of those moves was to send defender Brady Hough to Giants star Finn Callaghan, with the 23-year-old restricting the hard-running midfielder to a season-low 19 touches a week after he did a similar role on Narrm (Melbourne) gun Kysaiah Pickett.

Brownlow medal favourite Nick Daicos is the obvious match-up for Hough, after he had 34 disposals and a goal in their last meetings, but tagging Pendlebury in game 433 is also an option.

“We’ve got a really clear plan and our job is to go out there and win this game of football,” McQualter said.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to win the game of football, he (Pendlebury) has been a good player this year but he’s also surrounded by jets all around him.

“We’ll work our way through it, finalise our plans probably today and look forward to the game on Saturday.”

Asked about potentially tagging Daicos instead, McQualter said: “He’s an exceptional player and tagged or not, he has a huge influence on every game so we know as a team we can’t let him have time and space.

“So whether that’s a full tag, whether that’s a team mindset — if you give Nick Daicos time and space you’re going to be in trouble.”