ALAN Didak was cornered into telling the truth shortly before the six o'clock news went to air on Monday night. Too late to save his theatrical president Eddie McGuire from the ritual humiliation that followed and too late to save his football career at Collingwood, Didak admitted that he had lied to his football club yet again.

The confession took place in the kitchen of Didak's team-mate and Kew neighbour Heath Shaw, the footballer and aspirant to the Magpies' captaincy who had blown almost three times the legal limit after a car crash just before midnight on Sunday.

Sitting in the room with the two star footballers who will play no further part in Collingwood's quest for the 2008 finals were Shaw's manager, Mark Kleiman, and his elder brother, Rhyce, who was yesterday suspended for his role in the weekend bender for two matches.

Although Collingwood's football boss, Geoff Walsh, vehemently denied as much at yesterday's heated media exchange, a fourth player with priors in Ben Johnson was also with the group at Hawthorn's Geebung Hotel on Sunday night. His only punishment was to be ritually humiliated and labelled as "fat" in one of McGuire's more memorable sprays to the whole team on Monday. The club has accepted Johnson's insistence that he was drinking water.

Hopefully McGuire's team has investigated that claim more thoroughly than the question of Didak's role in the proceedings. "Dids?" Kleiman suddenly said to the footballer whose wild drunken ride with Queen Street murderer Wayne Hudson last year went unpunished in football terms: "You were in the car (with Shaw), weren't you?"

Didak had kept his role in the Hudson incident secret from the club for a week and only owned up after an interrogation by police.

Heath Shaw then called Geoff Walsh and pretty soon both Walsh and club chief executive Gary Pert were sitting in Shaw's house along with Didak's management representative Simon Lloyd, the brother of Essendon captain Matthew.

Shaw's shattered parents, Lisa and Ray, the former Collingwood captain inducted earlier this year into the club Hall of Fame, arrived soon afterwards. It was a terrible night, although the mood was more emotional than angry. Walsh and Pert said no decision could be made until the pair had consulted McGuire, whose Toorak home they headed for after leaving Kew.

Heath Shaw was devastated and burst into tears over his role in the incident that sparked what Pert admitted yesterday was "a black 48 hours" for the Collingwood Football Club.

Both players were asked by Pert and Walsh what they believed their punishment should be and both agreed they should at least miss Saturday night's pivotal clash with St Kilda at the MCG. Neither suspected they would be ejected from the team for the entire season.

Ray Shaw at one point told Didak what he thought of a bloke who would desert his mate after an accident and allow him to lie for him.

Didak did not say much but agreed the lying pair should call their captain Scott Burns, who earlier on Monday had, alongside team-mate Nick Maxwell, become stern with denial towards journalists who questioned whether Didak had been in the car with Shaw.

Burns arrived later, after 8pm when the club was preparing a media statement that would make a mockery of McGuire's earlier denials that Didak was in the car, when he declared he "will be accused of the Kennedy shooting next".

The Magpies' captain was reasonably calm and measured as he told his teammates what he thought of them, but he must have known the club's dwindling September expectations had been irrevocably eroded. He would also have suspected he had played his last game with Alan Didak.

A series of meetings yesterday involving players, McGuire and his executive looked at a two-week suspension but settled on the season. The Victorian Premier, John Brumby, a Collingwood supporter, yesterday challenged the culture of the club and alluded to a drinking problem within the playing group.

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou the previous day had expressed surprise that senior players would drink heavily four weeks before the finals. It seems clear that something has been rotten within the group at Collingwood and the club has finally taken a stand.

On Monday, McGuire said the worst punishment you could hand a player was to make him accountable to the media, his teammates and the club's fans by forcing him to grant interviews and play for the club. By Tuesday Collingwood was honest enough to concede by action, if not word, that the only true punishment was suspension. No player faced the media and neither Pert nor Walsh could explain why they had placed a heavier premium on lying to a football club than endangering life by drink-driving.

Curiously McGuire did not front the media yesterday after Monday's vintage performance, claiming prior commitments, a term mutually exclusive with McGuire's relationship with the football club he took over almost a decade ago. His former captain Nathan Buckley on Monday night had questioned McGuire's tendency to take centre stage during every little or not-so-little crisis at the Lexus Centre.

Certainly no one has heard from Didak. Recently, on signing his new $800,000-plus, two-year contract with the Magpies the 25-year-old refused to front the media but appeared in a Magpies-generated interview on the Collingwood website.

On Sunday night, after two nights of heavy drinking, Didak disappeared when the police arrived. It was Heath Shaw who visited him in the early hours of Monday after his positive breath test had been made official and suggested he protect Didak.

Didak only too readily agreed. Like Ben Cousins before him, the Magpies' best player now appears to have run away from his responsibilities once too often. It now seems clear that Collingwood has suspended Didak with a view to trading him at the end of the season.