Ex-coach’s struggles to reach ‘elusive’ CousinsStaff writers,
FOX SPORTS
March 29, 2017FORMER Richmond coach Terry Wallace says it had been difficult to maintain contact with an “elusive” Ben Cousins after the champion footballer left the AFL system.
The former West Coast captain was jailed on Tuesday after pleading guilty to 11 charges, including aggravated stalking.
Wallace, who coached Cousins when he returned to the AFL system with Richmond in 2009, said he’d largely struggled to contact his former player.
“I’ve tried quite regularly over a period of time, particularly moreso after he went back to WA initially,” Wallace said on Fox Sports News’ AFL Tonight.
“But there’s been a lot of people that have actually tried to do that as well.
“Unfortunately Ben hasn’t wanted that assistance from many people, which is up to him. I mean that’s his prerogative and choice.
“There’s been many of us that have tried to keep in touch over a period of time but it’s been very difficult to do. He’s changed phones quite regularly and been fairly elusive.”
Cousins had a public fall from grace in his final years at West Coast and was suspended for 12 months for bringing the game into disrepute in 2008.
Richmond threw the midfielder a lifeline at the end of his ban, with Cousins going on to play 32 games for the Tigers.
The first of his two years at Punt Road was under Wallace, who said Cousins had been in “a better place” when he was in the AFL system.
Terry Wallace talks with Ben Cousins.
“I’d like to say that in my time, I saw him prior to coming back into football when he had been away from the game for 12 months and he was in a really bad state at that time,” Wallace said.
“I saw him over the two years that he was back at the Richmond Football Club and he was in a far, far better place.
“So much so that his family and his dad in particular, Brian, said to us that he thanked the Richmond Football Club for giving them back their son, that they could go out and have dinner with him and be able to have level conversations.
“Once he left the AFL system and the Richmond Football Club, I think things went clearly very much downhill again.
“To me, I can’t guarantee what he did and didn’t do while he was at the Richmond Football Club, but I can absolutely assure everyone that he was in a much, much better place inside the AFL system than what he was prior to coming back in and obviously post.”
Wallace said while he felt everything possible had been done to help Cousins once the extent of his problems became clear, a failure to understand the severity of his drug issues when they first emerged had proven costly.
“I think perhaps where Ben probably fell short and the AFL fell short was — you go back to when he perhaps first started taking things and we didn’t realise how bad and how dangerous these drugs were,” Wallace said.
“You talk about something like ice, I think that now we understand exactly how it can get hold of a young person’s lifestyle and we see it on a daily basis unfortunately now.
“When Ben first started, it was a rockstar lifestyle that perhaps he was living and that drug culture was part of that.
“But I don’t think that him as a young man or the system itself knew how actually bad and insidious that was.”
Wallace said ultimately he felt for Cousins’ family and hoped his stint behind bars would help him in the long run.
“Ben’s had so many opportunities given to him along the way,” Wallace said.
“Of course no-one wants to see him in this position but I feel so much for his family who have tried everything, really, to try to turn things around in Ben’s life, but unfortunately the drugs and insidious nature of the way that they are have got control of him and got control of his life.
“So he now goes to jail for perhaps six months and (we’ll) see whether that can change things around at all.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/richmond/former-richmond-coach-terry-wallace-details-struggles-to-maintain-contact-with-elusive-ben-cousins/news-story/2eeea7d48cbf77d039b742a8ed3c5095
