COLLINGWOOD premiership player and former Carlton assistant coach Gavin Crosisca says the Blues never told their players to lose matches at the end of the infamous 2007 season.
 
The Blues were put under heavy speculation as they lost their last 11 matches in 2007 before drafting ruckman Matthew Kreuzer with a priority pick.
 
Crosisca said he never heard an instruction to lose a match but agreed with former colleague Tony Liberatore's comments in 2008 that the Blues sent players off early for surgery.
 
"I know at Carlton when I was there at that stage when we didn’t have any hopes of making finals, I know Brendan Fevola needed an operation so they sent him out two or three weeks before the end of the season," Crosisca said.
 
"A couple of guys who had minor niggles were sent away to get their operations done so they could ready and be up and firing for the start of pre-season which is generally only five to six weeks after that.
 
"During the game, it’s more of a fact of experimenting a little bit.
 
"They definitely didn’t go in saying we needed to lose this game and we needed to play poorly. It was definitely in the back of your mind that if the boys won fantastic and it’s a great result for the guys and experimenting positions and so forth and if we did lose there was a little bit of a bonus there for us which we certainly didn’t knock back."
 
The tanking debate resurfaced this week as Melbourne was slapped with a $500,000 fine for its actions in 2009.

Former coach Dean Bailey and football manager Chris Connolly were banned from football for 16 rounds and for one year respectively.