Collingwood forward Jack Ginnivan has returned to the AFL club to try and earn the trust of his teammates who say they won't shame him for a drugs ban.
Ginnivan has been suspended for two AFL premiership games after being filmed in a hotel toilet cubicle with an illicit drug.
"I'm pretty sorry and remorseful for the actions that I did and I'm ready to get to work today and earn the trust back of the group," Ginnivan told reporters as he returned to Collingwood's Olympic Park headquarters on Monday.
Ginnivan has also been hit with a strike under the AFL's illicit drugs policy and given a suspended $5000 fine.
New Magpies captain Darcy Moore said the club was disappointed with Ginnivan but would support the 20-year-old goalsneak.
"He's a really bubbly, really popular teammate, he is someone who really lights up the locker room," Moore told reporters.
"So we really want to see that and we just want to look after his wellbeing.
"This is obviously an error and a mistake that he's made and we're not interested in shaming him going forward.
"We want to support him and make sure he feels empowered to get back into his training ... I'm sure he's going to learn from this.
"We're human beings and people make errors of judgement and that's something that Jack has done in this instance."
Footage of Ginnivan with the illicit drug, reportedly ketamine, was taken at a Torquay hotel on a players' day off during Collingwood's pre-season training camp in January and the video was offered to media outlets.
Under the AFL's illicit drugs policy, a player will receive a $5000 fine for a first strike before they're named publicly.
A second strike results in a four-match ban and a third strike a 12-match suspension.
Moore said the policy was complicated when a first strike such as Ginnivan's was made public.
"It (the policy) clearly plays an important role in minimising harm around the league, in terms of flagging players who are at risk of making mistakes around drug use," Moore said.
"It provides invaluable unidentified data around the prevalence of drug use to the league and to the medical experts in order to keep tabs on how big of an issue this is.
"The challenging part of it is when things become public because around a welfare and a harm minimisation model, not everything is going to be public and when it does it can create a little bit of grey area.
" ... You would be crazy to think there's no players around the league who use drugs from time to time, it certainly exists.
"In terms of how widespread it is, I'm really not in a position to say considering I don't have all the data."
