Cousins suspended indefinitely - according to SEN

[greennick]

This article by Chip Le Grand in today's Oz is most revealing. I looked around and didn't see it in this thread or several others. I think he is the first journo to name the substance and along with last night's 7.30 report story the most detailed to date. I guess with his old man now admitting substance abuse, Chip won't be sweating over being sued, if he ever felt that way.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21424435-2722,00.html

very good article, i totally agree with it

although, from first hand experience, that particular core group of cocaine users cousins hangs around also use a little ice, the odd pill, but don't really touch weed

it is too simple to say cocaine was the drug, although it was, as the article said, his drug of choice

one of the problems may have been the increasing ice usage, although i still think cocaine had a large part in the downfall

it is just that a little ice often allows you to have more cocaine for longer, cos coke doesn't really keep you up and going like ice/rock/methamphetamine (whatever you want to call it) does

 

[Biggie]

This article by Chip Le Grand in today's Oz is most revealing. I looked around and didn't see it in this thread or several others. I think he is the first journo to name the substance and along with last night's 7.30 report story the most detailed to date. I guess with his old man now admitting substance abuse, Chip won't be sweating over being sued, if he ever felt that way.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21424435-2722,00.html

Man this article made me feel ill.

A real bad feeling in the gut.

Really amazing stuff to read.

 

[Embers]

Gonna be in the papers in the next few days but a ex Eagle until he was traded away and then delisted a while back (come on you know who) was saying how that after gameday Cousins was never able to get to sleep and he would have to take 4 sleeping pills just to get any rest after a game. Maybe just a mental thing but certainly strange

 

[- PC -]

Gonna be in the papers in the next few days but a ex Eagle until he was traded away and then delisted a while back (come on you know who) was saying how that after gameday Cousins was never able to get to sleep and he would have to take 4 sleeping pills just to get any rest after a game. Maybe just a mental thing but certainly strange

Sunday ... just to give us something for next week

 

[JUBJUB]

Is tracked another way of saying stalked ?

The Herald Sun tracked Bryan Cousins from his home in Leeming, near Fremantle, to the six-storey apartments at midday yesterday. He stayed there all afternoon.

He attempted to lose the Herald Sun in traffic before alighting from his four-wheel-drive behind a three-metre security gate.

Bryan should've got out and belted the living daylights out of *****pot Mark Robinson

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Sunday ... just to give us something for next week

I assume that will be Andrew Rule's next instalment. The Australian reveal a little more of the story today. Their investigative reporters are joining the pack.
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21429557-2722,00.html

Flying too high

If you're constantly feted as a god, soon you'll start believing you are one, writes Peter Lalor
March 23, 2007

INVESTING in Perth's booming real estate and resources industry has created a new breed of millionaires in the west. They're cash-rich, asset-heavy and highly visible in the small and oppressively concentrated community. The most visible of all in this new money club of miners, traders, stock and property agents and sportsmen are Ben Cousins and his football mates. Especially Cousins.

Young, good-looking and loaded with money and talent, Cousins is a magnet for fellow millionaires as well as fans, flatterers, troublemakers and the media who are drawn to the same restaurants, nightclubs and bars.

Such is his pulling power West Australian commentator Dennis Cometti once said you could sell 500 tickets to watch Cousins eat a sandwich. The West Coast Eagles have 44,000 paid-up members, 5500 on the waiting list and eyes on a new stadium that will blow that number out to 60,000.

To escape the glare, Cousins and his millionaire mates have even been known to catch private planes to far-flung parties before winging it back in time for training the next morning. The Eagles, as the club song says, "are flying high".

Cousins is a polite, intelligent young man who is, at least by day, engaging company. But even the most grounded human being cannot help but be affected by the daily overdose of adulation and attention. Being constantly feted as gods breeds a Caesar mentality, a sense of immortality and absolute power. And when things go wrong, someone else cleans up - or covers up - the mess. Someone else did this for Cousins up until his girlfriend and his club slammed the door in his face.

Cousins' natural reaction to living in this suffocating Big Brother house environment is to run. In February last year he bolted from a police breath test van, abandoning his $140,000 car at 12.15am on the Canning Highway in the riverside suburb of Applecross.

Showing the speed and stamina that landed him the Brownlow Medal the year before, Cousins shook eight policeman from his tail, running through a forest and across a river before arriving at the Bluewater Restaurant on top of a wooded hill. Breathless, shirtless and thirsty, he banged on the door and asked staff for a glass of water and to use the phone. A waiter opened the door and a murmur of excitement passed through the female staff as they took in his extraordinarily muscular physique before moving to the fresh, somewhat flushed face.

Of course he couldn't get away with it. He was, as he always is, recognised. "Are you Ben Cousins?" a staff member asked. "No," he replied. The interrogator would not give up and kept asking. "I'm his twin brother," Cousins offered without conviction. Within minutes the story began to filter out on the Perth grapevine, eventually making its way into the media.

Cousins could have and should have kept running. The player who can run with him in a game of football has not yet been discovered. Cousins is a man who cannot be caught by mortals. He runs until the lactic acid build-up in his blood is so great his system can't take any more. He can. He vomits, keeps running.

His opponents will be relieved that this week Cousins was suspended from the Eagles after months of rumours and innuendo. According to the rumour mill he has broken up with his girlfriend, Sam Druce, and gone off the rails. While it looked like a broken leg couldn't stop him on the field, it appears a broken heart has stopped him off it. But there's more to this than emotional turmoil.

West Coast chairman Dalton Gooding won't say exactly what is going on but told radio yesterday: "Ben has many private and personal issues that need to be addressed," he said, adding the 2006 grand final champion player needed "serious counselling". Coach John Worsfold says the problem is more than skipping training, Cousins has "other issues".

West Australian sports psychologist and academic Sandy Gordon says there are more factors at play than geography and the economy but concedes there is a pattern at theEagles.

"It's a boom town right now, the economy of the state is very healthy because of the mineral boom, and we are geographically isolated and to an extent that does create a goldfish bowl, which could explain some of the things that are happening," he says. "Young men have been doing this forever, they think they are immortal, but their lives can be snuffed out very quickly. A lot of the aggressiveness, the promiscuity, what I call narcissistic grandiosity in young male professional athletes has always been an achilles complex. Terminal adolescent syndrome has always been there.

"There are tremendous pressures from the entertainment industry that is professional sport and they are such that players can become slaves to it and lose themselves, and that's what I think could be happening to some players."

Cousins is not alone in being a turmoil and trouble magnet. WA police have long monitored his and his friends' associations with leaders of bikie gangs and known criminals. The club had been concerned but quiet as Cousins went on to win awards and the 2006 premiership. They wrote him a warning letter midway through last year and dropped him from the captaincy during the fall-out over the booze bus cross-country event. But things reached critical mass this week.

The Eagles have a core group of star players including Cousins, Chad Fletcher and Daniel Kerr, and until last year Michael Gardiner, who are as good on the field as they are bad off it. Last week it was revealed Fletcher was hospitalised for three days after apparently flat-lining in Las Vegas during an end of year trip with team-mates. At first his collapse and near-death were blamed on a reaction to a vaccination and later to alcohol, then a combination of both. There was talk of drugs, but his management claimed hospital toxicology reports would clear that up. The reports have never been released.

A few weeks earlier Kerr had two appointments in the local magistrates court. While awaiting an appearance over a drunken assault charge at a party, he allegedly became involved in a drunken assault on a taxi driver. Kerr was arrested at training. He apparently had become violent during a drunken visit to his girlfriend, who had collapsed at Perth airport. Everybody knows everybody in Perth and Kerr's girlfriend is the former girlfriend of former team-mate Gardiner. Kerr had earlier dated Cousins's sister and had broken Cousins's arm in a fight in 2002 at a club during that relationship. Gardiner transferred to St Kilda this year. His career at the Eagles came to an end after he wrote off his $60,000 car in the middle of the night. He had hit a light pole and caused $30,000 damage to two other cars.

Gardiner had been drinking with Cousins the night he was photographed and later arrested in Melbourne. Their underworld connections date back to 2001 and have resulted in them both being questioned by police and picked up on phone taps.

And every detail gets documented. "We have our one newspaper - I call it the 'West Australian Pravda' (The West Australian)," Gordon says. "They've got an army of journalists and they're eager for something to write about. Bad news sells and they are very hot on the button when things go wrong, but I don't think it's an overreaction. People are genuinely interested about Ben Cousins. The players are heroes over here and it could be that because they are so high-profile and they are the No.1 brand in WA that anything that goes on is front-page and back-page news. We have over 40,000 members for both AFL clubs who seriously identify with their clubs. Their websites are very active and the fans get to know their business and their personnel."

Cousins's problems have prompted comment from the WA Premier Alan Carpenter and, more tellingly, from AFL head Andrew Demetriou, who is determined to protect the integrity of his brand in a competitive market.

Francis Farrelly, an associate professor of marketing at Monash University who specialises in sport, says it can affect the bottom line.

"If bad behaviour is protracted, as it is at the West Coast, then it can have an effect on sponsors both at the team level and at the league level because it starts to become something beyond human frailty and it becomes something associated with that brand at the team level and the league level," Farrelly says. "It depends on how well it's handled because people realise sports stars are subject to human foibles like the rest of us but the AFL would be absolutely cognisant that this is a critical time on the sporting landscape of this country. Today you have genuine other options at the national level, like soccer."

Peter Lalor is a senior writer with The Australian.

 

[hotnews]

Just an interesting thing for all you footy people out there. Ricky Nixon was down geelong last night to raise money for local footy grounds cos of the drought and the issue of ben cousins got brought up to ricky and his two respone's was simple he wont play again this year and he might not play ever again. So this will be very interesting to see what happens in the future for ben. We all make mistakes in life and im sure he will learn from them.......finger crossed but its entirley up to him now!

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Chip Le Grand wrote another articles on Cousins and the illicit drug policy of the AFL in today's Australian.

http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21435693-2722,00.html

Muddled system failed Cousins
Chip Le Grand
March 24, 2007

GIVEN the drugs binge the AFL had been on all week, it came as no surprise that football awoke with buzzing in its head.

First there was John Howard, urging the AFL to adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards illicit drugs. Then came the angry echo, ringing long and loud down talkback lines. As Ben Cousins knows, there is always someone selling a quick fix.

Within the national competition, however, the admission by Bryan Cousins that his celebrated son Ben indeed has a drug problem has spawned a more considered debate.

The AFL unashamedly put player welfare above all else when it framed its illicit drugs policy. AFL clubs, the organisations at the coalface of the drug issue, are now questioning whether their own interests, and perhaps those of the community, have been neglected along the way.

In the Victorian town of Geelong, where drugs are as readily available to footballers as any major city, Cats chief executive Brian Cook wondered how a player "who has obviously got addictive habits with drugs" could get through the system.

On the opposite side of the country, his West Coast counterpart Trevor Nisbett was asking himself a similar question.

"When Ben is playing outstanding football and never misses a beat at training and does all his weights and does a magnificent job in his community work, we have no reason to doubt him when he tells us he is going pretty well," Nisbett said.

"We failed in our attempt to assist Ben because we are not counsellors; we are not equipped to spot people. The first signs you notice is when a guy doesn't turn up for training or he is late for training and there is no reason given, or his behaviour changes from what it was. At the end of it, we feel a little bit useless."

Both Cook and Nisbett believe the AFL's illicit drugs policy must change. Nisbett says clubs must be told at an earlier stage when its players test positive to drugs like cocaine, ecstasy and ice and that they must have authority to target-test players - with the consent of its players and the AFL players association - when anecdotal or circumstantial evidence of drug use arises.

Nisbett would also like to see more AFL testing than is now done.

Cook concedes clubs do not know the answers, but he says the drugs scandal that has engulfed football will push it inexorably towards adopting tougher measures against players who offend.

"There has certainly been a changing of our thinking towards this issue over the last couple of weeks," Cook said.

"Player welfare was certainly the uppermost priority in the minds of some leaders. Whilst that is extremely important, I think there are other issues to consider as well, which is the AFL industry, its status and reputation, the community and the law of the land.

"Whilst we have to always consider the welfare of the player, there are other considerations. Sometimes those considerations are even more important."

On the other side of the argument, administrators such as Fremantle chief executive Cameron Schwab still believe player welfare is all that matters.

"It is very easy for people to come out and be critical of it and I think it is totally opportunistic and inappropriate," Schwab said. "I think it is a very well thought-out system to manage what is a very complex issue.

"Are we are trying to help people or punish them? Helping them is the total priority. Do they need deterrence from ruining their lives?

"Everyone in society is given huge warnings about the problems of taking illicit substances yet people still do. It is all about trying to help the person. Everything else - the image of the game - is totally secondary to helping the person to make their choices."

AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou continues to defend his policy, which was based heavily on the advice of drug and alcohol abuse specialists, and remains sceptical of the clubs' need to know.

"It is an interesting conundrum that we face," Demetriou told Melbourne Radio 3AW. "Often clubs will say we want to know. We want to know on the first strike, the second strike. History tells us that when some instances happen at football clubs, what they have done in the past is try to sweep that under the carpet or hide it."

In some ways, the debate is a re-run of the argument heard two years ago when the AFL, under pressure from the World Anti-Doping Agency and the federal Government, introduced an illicit drugs policy to run in parallel to its WADA-style testing for performance-enhancing drugs.


While everyone in Australian sport appeared to have an opinion on the issue, the finer points of the new policy were not well understood, particularly as it applied to Cousins' drug of first choice, cocaine.

On match days, cocaine is considered performance-enhancing. Any player who tests positive is subject to an automatic, two-year ban.

Outside of match-days, cocaine offers no benefit to performance and is dealt with under the illicit drugs policy. Players are given "three strikes" before the club management is informed and the player dealt with by the AFL tribunal.

"It is a policy which is stricter than any regime in Australia," said Bill Stronach, the chief executive of the Australian Drugs Foundation.

"Apart from the NRL, who are looking at it at the moment, no one else has got an illicit drug testing regime."

The significance of the Cousins saga - and, as of last night, police tapes which suggest Daniel Kerr brought illicit sedatives from a convicted drug dealer five years ago - is that the debate has shifted from the hypothetical to a living, breathing, match-winning case study.

As West Coast chairman Dalton Gooding put it: "It is a little bit like having a clinical trial. We now have some evidence which might help us come to different conclusions.

"The drugs policy needs to be reviewed and debated robustly so our experiences can be heard and taken into account."

The twist in the Cousins tale is that the illicit drug code had no bearing on the spectacular sequence of events which began last July, when the club first became convinced that its former captain had a serious problem, and culminated on Tuesday, when Cousins was suspended indefinitely from playing.

Demetriou does not believe this is evidence his drugs code failed. His one criticism of the Eagles is they should have told the AFL of Cousins' issues eight months ago.

Stronach says heavier sanctions would not necessarily deter more players.

"It is a very complex issue and I think what you have today from the Prime Minister is the assumption that there is a quick fix to this; that you suspend them straight away and there won't be any illicit drug use," Stronach said.

"The world doesn't work that way. There will be some people who continue to use, whether there is the immediate threat of suspension or they get 10 chances."

The most damning charge levelled at the West Coast is it either turned a blind eye to Cousins' drug taking or actively covered it up. Nisbett says both these claims are untrue and that last July was the first time the club had anything other than "rumour and innuendo" to act on.

"Because it wasn't public doesn't mean we weren't working diligently to try to get this right," he said. He said the rest of the playing group noticed the change in Cousins at the same time as club management.

Gooding said one of the first steps for the board was to hire a clinical psychologist specialising in drug and alcohol abuse to explain the prevalence of drug use, the various drugs available and likely side-effects. Gooding knows more now than he did, but lays no blame at anyone within the club for failing to identify Cousins' problems earlier.

For conservative politicians like Howard, the issue is black and white; particularly in an election year. "I think people have come to realise the only approach you can have to drugs is one of zero tolerance. It is not an easy job but if you ask me my opinion, you can't be tough enough when it comes to drugs."

For football clubs primarily in the business of winning games, things are not so clear. "I think we owe the same management and resources to any player at our club," Nisbett said. "Above and beyond that, I think we owed more to Ben. We would do the same for any player in our footy club and possibly, we did more for Ben to try and assist him further because we felt it was getting out of out control.

"Ben Cousins was the face of our club. He has done so much for our footy club. We felt we need to go beyond what we would normally do to assist him. If a stock broker firm has a broker who is a genius and makes them a lot of money but comes into work every day, do they fire him or keep him on? We have an obligation to all of our players to do the best job we possibly can. Unfortunately, in Ben's case, it was nowhere near good enough."

 

[scottwade]

Slected extracts from Caroline Wilson article in The Age today.
http://www.theage.com.au/realfooty/...-but-allout-war/2007/03/24/1174597953745.html

Happily for the game's eroding image no one taped the sordid scene that Samantha Druce witnessed last weekend when she went to the house her former partner Ben Cousins was sharing with Daniel Chick. What she saw was further evidence that Cousins, Kerr, Michael Gardiner and Chad Fletcher are not the only past or present Eagles who have serious substance abuse issues.

The men at the top — John Worsfold, Trevor Nisbett and Dalton Gooding — are shattered but surely they knew their club's culture had been infected with an insidious social disease long ago.

Surely Worsfold knew of Cousins' growing addiction before last winter?

How could Gooding, the club chairman, give so many versions of Fletcher's near-death experience having never questioned the player or correctly sought the truth? There were club officials in Las Vegas and medical evidence available had they threatened him with suspension if he had not revealed it.

Why, when the club was apparently so concerned about Cousins, did it not act decisively when he over-indulged so dangerously in Melbourne that the police arrested him?

Were they working diligently behind the scenes to rehabilitate their players or were they more concerned with image and premierships? There is no doubt the manner in which the club sought to manage its drug culture during 2005 and 2006 smacked of a club which believed, rightly, it was capable of a premiership.

I have no doubt that most other clubs facing a similar scandal would have done the same.

How is it that Worsfold finally began dealing with the Cousins issue last August and yet last month recommended a $5000 fine for Kerr's assault on a taxi driver when the player was clearly off his head?

There is no doubt West Coast is not alone in this. Frankly, I am tired of the football industry pinning this on society. Clearly drugs are a social problem, but equally, they are a massive football problem which football has proved incapable of tackling in any meaningful manner.

 

[- PC -]

Happily for the game's eroding image no one taped the sordid scene that Samantha Druce witnessed last weekend when she went to the house her former partner Ben Cousins was sharing with Daniel Chick. What she saw was further evidence that Cousins, Kerr, Michael Gardiner and Chad Fletcher are not the only past or present Eagles who have serious substance abuse issues.

Is this meant to be related to an email alleging certain activities happening before the trio arrived?

Caro used an email as a source????

I hope not

 

[scottwade]

Is this meant to be related to an email alleging certain activities happening before the trio arrived?

Caro used an email as a source????

I hope not

Honestly have no idea and I know that she's not everyone's cup of tea, but she does have good sources, generally speaking.

 

[Crow-mo]

Is this meant to be related to an email alleging certain activities happening before the trio arrived?

Caro used an email as a source????

I hope not

you received that email too?

sounded like they were having a great time to me!

 

[ToO]

$3000 a week habit and addicted to ice?

Cousin's career is finished.
No sensible club will touch him with a barge pole.

I just hope his addiction doesn't kill him.

 

[DeadlyAkkuret]

Drug users dubbed cheats.

Parisotto, who wrote the book Blood Sport and led the research team that developed advanced drug testing for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, said performance and training could be enhanced by illicit drugs similar to cocaine and amphetamines.

"Provided they are not absolutely off their faces, they can absolutely be very performance enhancing," he said.

http://www.foxsports.com.au/story/0,8659,21440448-23211,00.html

I'm not saying i agree with this article, but it gives me a bit of an empty feeling inside. I'd hate to think we were beaten in that manner.

 

[Crow-mo]

$3000 a week habit and addicted to ice?

Cousin's career is finished.
No sensible club will touch him with a barge pole.

I just hope his addiction doesn't kill him.

yeah, whatever you say chief

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Parisotto, who wrote the book Blood Sport and led the research team that developed advanced drug testing for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, said performance and training could be enhanced by illicit drugs similar to cocaine and amphetamines

Damn good book if you want to find out about non steroid performance enhancing drugs, how wide spread it, EPO in particular, was before he developed the test in the led up to Sydney 2000, the wide use by amateur sportsmen as well, and how under the guise of perceived conflict of interest, his funding was cut by the government in 2001 and stiffling his work into genetics doping, resulting in his resignation from the AIS at Christmas 2003. I read the book when it was released in the middle of last year and regularly refer back to it and have quoted from it a couple of times on these boards.

 

[DeadlyAkkuret]

Damn good book if you want to find out about non steroid performance enhancing drugs, how wide spread it, EPO in particular, was before he developed the test in the led up to Sydney 2000, the wide use by amateur sportsmen as well, and how under the guise of perceived conflict of interest, his funding was cut by the government in 2001 and stiffling his work into genetics doping, resulting in his resignation from the AIS at Christmas 2003. I read the book when it was released in the middle of last year and regularly refer back to it and have quoted from it a couple of times on these boards.

I'd like to think no team would resort to any kind of performance enhancing drug, but like i said, it leaves me feeling a little angry, at the thought of my team being cheated. I'll probably be flamed by WCE fans now, even though i haven't made any direct accusations.