SAM Murray should have been celebrating his 21st birthday next Sunday giddy with excitement at the prospect of his first AFL final just days away.

Instead, the Collingwood defender will notch his milestone well aware he has set a flame to his career and poured a gallon of petrol onto it.

If there are more reckless acts in football than snorting cocaine — that phrase again — just days before an AFL game without regard for the career-ending consequences, it’s hard to know what they are.

SAM MURRAY: HOW THE DRUGS NEWS BROKE

ALL AUS: ROBBO PICKS HIS 2018 ALL AUS TEAM

LIST CHANGES: WHO HAS MOVED ON AT YOUR CLUB?

That one line of cocaine — and he would be the world’s unluckiest man if that line was his first — will easily cost him $1 million in lost earnings across the life of his likely ban.

Despite all the warnings and AFLPA education sessions he has committed an act that carries a four-year ban that he is likely to serve all of given the very limited access to discounts or concessions.

Exactly when he took that drug in the lead-in to the Richmond game on July 28 is a detail even Collingwood isn’t aware of, but safe to say it was midweek at the earliest.

media_camera Sam Murray playing for Collingwood. Picture: AAP Images

Murray is now on his own, supported by the club but never likely to return in any meaningful capacity.

And along with his AFLPA-appointed lawyer in the fight of his life to dodge anything but a four-year ban.

Collingwood will point to the fact its culture has changed dramatically since the bad boys populated this club and arguably turned a likely dynasty into a trail of off-field destruction.

They will privately say that so much has changed, so many lessons have been learnt since the two-year bans for Lachie Keeffe and Josh Thomas that hit the player group like a hammer blow.

The problem is that it is just so darned easy to join the dots.

Two years ago as the Pies imploded after contested revelations of a number of illicit drug positives, Nathan Buckley said the Pies had been “betrayed” by the drug code.

He said the culture had changed, that “it’s not a Collingwood issue, it’s an AFL issue”.

His issue is that his players keep getting caught in the crosshairs.

media_camera Lachie Keeffe and Josh Thomas address the media after their drugs bans. Picture: Michael Klein

They keep betraying Buckley with their actions.

Keeffe and Thomas were caught after returning from an intense New Zealand training camp where the first thing they did was seek a release with illicit drugs, later found to be laced with clenbuterol.

Later that year Dane Swan admitted upon the release of his biography that he experimented with drugs but not the “performance enhancing drugs” or the “heavy stuff”.

“I know my club, it was a very small amount,” he said of the alleged drug use.

If that is the case, Keeffe, Thomas and Murray are just dead stiff to be among the very few AFL players publicly revealed to have tested positive for illicit drugs in recent years.

That “volcanic” past keeps coming back to haunt the Pies.

In truth Collingwood’s culture has dramatically changed since those days when the Pies forcibly traded out multiple players whose after-dark activities weren’t conducive to on-field success.

Collingwood didn’t want to be the next West Coast, counting its premierships but wondering at what cost it chased success.

Back in the days around the turn of the decade every bloke on the street wanted to tell you the latest rumour or fill you in on witnessing the latest sighting of a player doing something he shouldn’t.

Collingwood’s success this year isn’t just about talent, it is based on a tight-knit group of players like Scott Pendlebury and Adam Treloar who train their bums off and are finally bringing the kids like Jordan De Goey along with them.

De Goey’s redemptive arc has been proof of their gains of their culture: pulling his head in, knocking off his rough edges, doing it the new Collingwood way.

What the Pies will be thinking today was why they worked so hard to trade for Murray, only to get a player with a reputation as a lad who has dragged them backwards again.

Collingwood’s rejoinder to the slights on their culture was this: we can only keep winning and show them we won’t be broken like this.

media_camera Jordan De Goey is embracing Collingwood’s culture. Picture: Michael Klein

Certainly two years ago as the illicit drugs story broke, the ensuring controversy brought them to their knees.

They were obliterated by Sydney in an 80-point loss where Swan’s career ended with a broken foot and they never recovered amid a wave of finger-pointing and recriminations.

Players said later their focus was shattered as parents wondered if their son was among those to record a positive, the Pies recording three early losses and winning just nine games.

Today they will again venture to an interstate venue with plenty on the list, needing to prove off-field distractions won’t derail their season.

In truth Murray will barely set foot in the Holden Centre again, banned from playing given his interim suspension and with months ahead of him before a penalty lands.

media_camera Sam Murray with teammates at Collingwood training in August. Picture: Getty Images

Confirmation of his B sample in several weeks will put in place a process that includes an infraction notice with a potential penalty, with Murray then deciding to fight the charge at an AFL anti-doping hearing or accept the full penalty.

As former boss Richard Ings told the Herald Sun on Friday, proving your drink was spiked or you ingested a drug inadvertently can be close to impossible.

So Murray has flushed his career down the toilet.

Now it is up to Collingwood to prove its culture is strong enough to withstand the latest storm.

Watch every match of every round of the 2018 Toyota AFL Premiership Season. SIGN UP NOW >