COLLINGWOOD president Eddie McGuire has contacted the AFL to confirm rumours of a football betting syndicate within the team's ranks were just that – a rumour.

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Social media and online forums were heaving on Thursday with claims a group of Magpie players had been betting on matches involving their own team, and the club was facing a set of penalties including expulsion from finals.

Speaking on Triple M radio on Friday morning, McGuire vehemently hit back at the rumours.

"The AFL integrity department – this is a very serious department of the AFL, with the backing of Victoria Police – are investigating this," McGuire said.

"Because one, there's defamatory comments … forget about the harassment part of it and all the rest of it.

"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.

"I think this one started maybe a week or two ago, there was a bit of a spotfire, and then somebody stoked it up yesterday and it's gone nuts."

Young Magpie Jaidyn Stephenson was banned for 22 matches (12 suspended) in June for betting on AFL matches in which he played.

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