We've still got journos saying we've got no major sponsor
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Stephen Rielly | December 29, 2008
Article from: The Australian
In fact, the top four sides of the season -- Geelong, Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs and St Kilda -- were all Victorian, although the financial vulnerability of so many of the Melbourne-based clubs could see this new order collapse as quickly as it rose.
Three Melbourne-based clubs -- Melbourne, Western Bulldogs and Richmond -- are heading into the new year without major sponsors, with a number of others worried about the commitment of the ones they have. .....
If this was not confirmation enough that success is always temporary, Ben Cousins' protracted return to the game proved it.
The 2005 Brownlow medallist, premiership midfielder, former West Coast captain and multiple All-Australian couldn't find a home until, with less than 24 hours before the last avenue of return was to close, Richmond decided to invite him into its lair.
Cousins had figured that he would stroll back into the game once the AFL commission granted him the right to play again. It did, in mid-November, but the interest of the clubs he presumed would happily ignore his illicit drug habit and underworld friendships disappeared quicker than his once-brilliant career had 12 months earlier.
One by one they found reasons to announce that, at 30 years of age, Cousins didn't fit with their hastily rediscovered "youth policies".
Of those with any interest at all, Collingwood was the first to go cold on his trail.
With the Magpies out, St Kilda followed. Then Brisbane. North Melbourne nibbled but never got serious and suddenly, by early December, there was no one interested at all.
Not even the Tigers, until AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou and Richmond president Gary March spoke. Out of their conversation emerged the Tigers' application to shift the injured Graham Polak on to the club's rookie list, a somewhat airy concept designed to create an opening for Cousins to fill.
The commission, not to mention most of the clubs, refused to endorse it, which gave rise to the idea that Demetriou had been rolled, but by then the Tigers felt that there was no viable option other than to take Cousins on.
At approximately 10.30am on Tuesday, December 16, courtesy of pick six in the only pre-season draft that is ever likely to be remembered, Cousins finally came in from the cold. Through the back door rather than the front, perhaps, but in nonetheless.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24850589-2722,00.html
