A mystery woman claiming to be the mum of a former Collingwood footballer says her son’s career was ruined by a drug-taking incident at the Magpies.
Collingwood is reeling from the bombshell news rising star Jack Ginnivan has been handed a two-match ban after vision reportedly surfaced of the 20-year old taking an illicit substance at a Torquay hotel.
The forward has been suspended for Collingwood’s first two pre-season matches as well as its first two games of the regular season and has been hit with a $5000 suspended fine while copping a strike under the league’s illicit drugs policy.
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The club has denied suggestions of a widespread drugs problem — but the mystery mum claimed her son had his standing at the club destroyed when he sampled drugs at his first Magpies social occasion.
A woman phoned into 3AW on Monday, claiming her son was first offered drugs at an official Collingwood team function.
A woman identified as ‘Mary’ appeared on Neil Mitchell’s morning show, claiming her son was ridiculed at the club after “making a complete fool of himself” while under the influence of drugs at an official club event.
Moore: ‘No issue’ with drugs at Pies | 07:25
“I have listened to this for years … I have a son who was drafted by Collingwood a couple of years ago,” the caller said.
“He was a fantastic athlete, still is. And within the first social occasion, the private function that he had with the club, he was introduced to cocaine.”
She said her son had been dumped by the club.
“I won’t say it was directly as a result of that one particular instance, but what I’m saying – he went to this function, he was boozed up because it was at a pub and was free,” the woman said.
“Then he consumed something that was offered to him and then went out and made a complete fool of himself in front of the entire team and then was ridiculed for the remainder of his time there about how he said inappropriate things and behaved poorly.”
Magpies football boss Graham Wright and captain Darcy Moore have both denied the playing group has a wider problem outside of Ginnivan’s isolated incident.
Ginnivan suspended over drug use | 00:33
On Tuesday morning, Bombers legend and SEN Breakfast radio host Tim Watson said Ginnivan’s decision to take an unknown substance as an elite athlete “beggars belief”.
“I’ll tell you what worries me the most about this and that is what it can lead to,” he told SEN.
“You’ve got someone in the middle of a footy camp … and the thing they want to do is participate in illegal drug taking. Heavy drug taking. They may have just had a lecture on diet and all the things you need to put in your system and they sit there and say, ‘Yeah, we have to be careful about what we eat and we have to keep our skinfolds down’ and all that kind of thing’.
“And then they go and put something into their bodies that they’ve got no ideas about how it was controlled. How it was made. What it was cut with. Where it was cut. And the lack of safety and the issues around that. That beggars belief for me that somebody involved in an elite professional training program and sport (would do that).”
