McGuire wants investigation into source of Collingwood rumours
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has been forced to address with the AFL rumours that Magpie players were implicated in another betting scandal that went viral on social media yesterday.
Although there was no substance to the messages that every person in Victoria seemed to be aware of on Thursday, McGuire was so frustrated that he claimed on Triple M on Friday that an investigation was necessary to determine the source of the rumours.
"What happens in these things now, is everyone has a bit of a laugh … all of these things went through, we saw them at the club," McGuire said.
"The AFL integrity department, this is a very serious department of the AFL, with the backing of Victoria Police, are investigating this.
"No one’s taking a happy go lucky view of this … it’s 100 per cent not true.
"But [it got] to the point where we had to ring the AFL yesterday [on Thursday] to just check if something was going on that we didn’t know about."
The AFL was aware of the rumours on Thursday that claimed a group of Collingwood players were being investigated in relation to betting activity and were forced to respond to media enquiries about them.
They are understood to be monitoring the situation to determine what action, if any, can be taken to discover the source of such rumours.
Social media has led to an explosion of rumours about AFL participants and there are increasing concerns among the industry about their potential impact.
However Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley took a different approach refusing to dignify the rumours with a comment.
When asked what his club could do about such rumours, Buckley refused to engage with the issue and give it more oxygen.
"What we do as a football industry? I suppose this is where you want me to deny it so you can write about it?" Buckley said.
"I refuse to deny it.
"All good?"
So ended the conversation.