SYDNEY coach Dean Cox and captain Callum Mills have publicly apologised for the actions of five Swans players at a Melbourne hotel on Monday morning that sparked a police investigation and resulted in those players being suspended for the rest of the AFL season.

Cox and Mills faced the media on Friday morning, two days after the club banned Riley Bice, Nick Blakey, Isaac Heeney, James Jordon and Chad Warner for the rest of the season, including finals, for breaching club standards and behaviours.

The Swans leaders offered an apology to AFLW players, female Swans staff, their partners, mothers, sisters, and the broader community.

>> SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH THE FULL MEDIA CONFERENCE

A host of Swans players and officials looked on as the senior coach and captain spoke to reporters outside the Swans' headquarters, echoing the sentiments of Swans CEO Matthew Pavlich who said on Wednesday that the club was "deeply embarrassed and ashamed" by the alleged incident.

"I'm deeply shocked and disappointed to be here. I firstly want to apologise to the AFLW players, our female staff and the women in our lives, our partners, mothers, sisters, and all women within the community. We take these allegations extremely seriously and we hope the women involved are getting all the support they deserve," Mills said.

"We are really disappointed in the action of these five players and as a playing group, we fully support the club's decision on the sanctions handed down. We take full responsibility and we are deeply sorry."

Cox expressed his concern for the women involved and said his focus was rebuilding the club's once-famed culture.

"To the women involved, I hope everyone is getting the support they need," he said.

"A culture isn't perfect. One things that we do know is that our culture has taken a hit. The thing you need to understand about a culture is how you respond, and the actions you take following being hit. We are going to work through as hard as we possibly can to get the trust back from the community."

Both Mills and Cox were asked repeatedly about their knowledge of events in the hotel room at the Pullman Hotel on Monday morning, including a claim on 3AW radio on Friday morning from the lawyer representing two of the women involved that "club leaders" were present in the room, but declined to answer, citing the ongoing police investigation.

Cox, however, said he was not in the room. 

The Swans released a strongly worded statement later on Friday morning, saying the club believed that, based on its investigations, any suggestions there were more than five representatives of the club in the room were false. The club said it was considering its legal position on the matter. 

"The Sydney Swans can confirm that all investigations carried out by the club have consistently indicated that the only representatives of the club in the room central to the police investigation were the five players who have been stood down," the statement read. 

"We have every reason to consider that reports to the contrary are simply false. 

"We are respecting the process with the relevant authorities and will refrain from commenting on police matters.

"We would also like to take this opportunity to condemn some of the misinformation being reported and are now considering our legal position on those matters."

Mills said he'd had "extremely hard" conversations with the five players, and said there was a range of emotions among the wider playing group.

"There's pain, there's disappointment, there's sadness, and as I said, we're going to bind together to be better from this," he said.

Cox said he had also spoken to the five players, saying the conversations "tore me up". 

"My role as the senior coach is to support our players but we are fully supportive of the decision the board made and that is unanimous," he said. 

"This is not a football issue. Monday morning was not a football issue. Behaviours were breached and that's why the sanctions were handed down.

"I've spoken to them about their welfare. I can't ask them any questions or speak to them about what happened that night because it is a police investigation but as you can imagine, everyone at the football, and everyone in general has had different emotions and they've gone through all of them."

When asked if the players should have had a curfew to ensure they were back at the hotel at a reasonable hour, Cox said the team had discussed making "the right decisions" after the win over Essendon at the SCG.  

"We spoke post-game about what's required to make the right decisions. These obviously aren't the right decisions and that's why we've acted as a football club and come down with the sanctions," he said. 

On Thursday evening, Sydney named its team to face North Melbourne at the SCG on Sunday in the final round of the home and away season. 

The five banned players have been replaced in the squad by James Rowbottom, Harry Cunningham, Malcolm Rosas, Angus Sheldrick and Caiden Cleary, with Tom Hanily, Patrick Snell and Corey Warner also coming into the 26.  

More to come