MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - AUGUST 02: Collingwood President Eddie McGuire looks on during a Collingwood Magpies AFL training session at the Holden Centre on August 02, 2019 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Jonathan DiMaggio/Getty Images)

Eddie McGuire has hit back on Triple M at a false rumour claiming that Collingwood will be banned from the finals series due to a gambling dilemma.

The rumours of the gambling dispute were quickly shut down after a fake screen-grab of a player’s phone quickly circulated around the football world.

“Some of the boys have had a betting syndicate,” part of the fake message read. “(Player’s name) dumped the bet on us to lose to Hawthorn. Then it just snowballed from there. They just kept betting against us … had a meeting the other day and we’re told by the AFL commission we’re not going to play finals.”

McGuire said that he has been aware of the rumour since last week, but “somebody stoked it up yesterday and it’s gone nuts”.

The Collingwood President was quick to squash the rumour and its credibility, and has stated that the club is in the process of an investigation into finding out where the rumour started and who was behind the false allegations.

“The AFL Integrity Department, this is a very serious department of the AFL, with the backing of Victoria Police, are investigating this. Because one, there’s defamatory comments in this, forget about the harassment part of it and all the rest of it,” he said on Triple M.

“But the integrity of the game is paramount to everybody. 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 to just check if something was going on that we didn’t know about.”

Ex-Bulldogs star and Triple M companion Luke Darcy said “someone’s put some work in to manufacture a scandal here”, and has stated that these sort of incidents can linger over time.

“I’ve seen it in the past where rumours have been circulating that are completely untrue about players and alleged affairs and things that have happened, and they stay with them forever even though they’re not true,” Darcy said.