Geelong coach Chris Scott has issued a warning against speculating on an incident which left Jack Steven in hospital with a stab wound over the weekend.
Calling for Steven's privacy to be respected at a press conference on Thursday, Scott said the club was rallying around the midfielder who was discharged from hospital on Wednesday.
"He's out of hospital and in pretty good spirits. Clearly he was a victim of something quite serious. We're trying to respect his privacy as much as possible as well," Scott said.
"We want to care for him and help as much as we possibly can but we certainly don't want to add to the invasion of his privacy that's already taken place.
"It's clear that he was the victim of something quite serious that required hospitalisation. But I think that the priority should be his well-being and part of that is respecting his privacy as well.
"I get the feeling that people would want to roll some of the previous issues that Jack has had into this current situation and I would caution against that."
Last year, Steven -- who was as St Kilda at the time -- missed chucks of the season battling a range of mental health problems.
Despite the incident which occurred at the weekend, Scott is confident Steven will be back at training within "days", and is still in the mix to feature in Round 2, set to begin on June 11.
"He's very much in our thoughts when it comes to the possible composition of our team in 2020. I'll speculate and say it's more like days than weeks for a training return," Scott said.