THE EAGLE IS BRANDED

They still don’t get it. Ben Cousins in the news again, in disgrace again,  still leading the lifestyle of some over-indulged Hollywood brat. And the football ostriches still don’t get it.

Sure they finally sacked him from the club but the reports from out west are all about ‘poor Ben’. The footie bosses’ quotes are still full of lines like ‘he’s sick’, ‘Ben is fighting a disease’, he has ‘this illness’. It’s a  ‘very serious health issue’. Like, it’s not his fault.

Cousins does not have a disease. Does not have an illness. He has a self-inflicted addiction. And, if latest reports are true, his typical way of ‘fighting this disease’, is to party hard with others drug users and associate with strippers from a night club that attracts drug dealers and bikie gangs.

Cancer is a disease. A brain tumour is a disease. And if the West Coast Eagles really believe this public relations rubbish about him being ‘sick’ then why sack him? Would they sack a player with cancer. Of course not.

They have finally had to bite the bullet because Cousins and Chick and Kerr and at least five other West Coast players have treated the place like ‘Animal House’ for years.

And with their eyes only on a thing called a Premiership Cup the club’s staff and executives just ignored or excused documented off-field behaviour that was turning that trophy into an increasingly tarnished and eventually poisoned chalice.

The blinkered fans cheered Cousins like a conquering hero when he returned (too early) to the field after his brief stint in rehab. They should have booed him for cynically mocking their support.

But he didn’t even learn from that. Didn’t learn from the  death of his mate Chris Mainwaring whom he spent the last day of his life with.

I guess Cousins was so naïve or so dumb that he thought his mate was going to the toilet every time he left the room on the fateful and fatal day. Obviously didn’t see him imbibing in a lethal cocktail of drugs that a toxicology report now shows included cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis, anti-depressants, alcohol and Roaccutane.

Surely he couldn’t have joined him. He’d promised the club, in exchange for his return, that he’d go straight. The fact that he was partying hard again was known to everybody out west. But that was just Ben. He’d always partied hard, slept little, associated with gangsters like the convicted heroin dealer John Kizon.

His aw shucks grin, golden boy looks and talents with a footy would get him through. Always did. This time it hasn’t.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007