Truth is stranger than fiction Caroline Wilson
August 15, 2010 SOMETIMES AFL football provides storylines even the most imaginative scriptwriter would shy away from. And in boardrooms and at match committees, decisions are made that render hindsight at times quite brutal.
Can it really be almost two whole seasons since the St Kilda board met one evening in late spring and voted against recruiting Ben Cousins?
No one really blamed the Saints at the time for deciding that Cousins' baggage wasn't worth carrying even though it seemed for a brief few weeks to be a career-ending choice dictated to a degree by sponsors and corporate concerns.
History relates that Richmond took a chance - Cousins' last in AFL terms - on the 2005 Brownlow medallist in a decision that has provided its peaks and troughs but ultimately provided some redemption for both parties.
St Kilda went on to play a season of football punctuated by sheer brilliance and consistency only to be denied a premiership by what in reality boiled down to one kick. We will never know whether Cousins and his quite extraordinary will to win combined with the Saints' devastating midfield would have made the difference.
Either way, Ross Lyon and his team knew they needed to inject that midfield with speed and one year after denying Cousins, the club turned to another troubled player in Andrew Lovett along with disgruntled Docker Brett Peake. The popular former captain and a face of the Saints in Luke Ball could see he was being moved to the outer and got himself to Collingwood.
The threads of all of the above came together over the past week - a week in which the game has been forced to suck up some very unattractive headlines. It began on the MCG eight nights ago where Ball once again demonstrated the key piece he has provided in a jigsaw that has elevated Collingwood to firm premiership favourite.
On the same night on the other side of the country, West Coast - Cousins' football home from the age of 17 - was relegated for the first time to the dreaded wooden spoon.
It cannot be denied that this wealthy and once formidable outfit has not recovered from the drug and other social problems that saw Cousins sacked. So many decisions taken since then relate back to that dark time and the ensuing AFL and political scrutiny. By playing it safe, the club has shed more than it intended.
The release of parts of a documentary that show the devastation Cousins' drug addiction wreaked on his family and the gravity of an illness that nearly killed him, and for which the AFL and West Coast cannot escape some blame, has put the league at odds with host broadcaster Channel Seven.
And several versions of the dreadful detail of a night which ended Lovett's brief and unhappy tenure at St Kilda and saw him committed to stand trial for rape were also made public. Every senior industry figure who has watched the incomplete but engrossing Such is Life has recommended it to parents and teenagers alike but there are many lessons too in the details of the Saints' night out that went horribly wrong.
This is a cautionary tale involving alcohol, celebrity, sex and race which resulted in two rape charges. St Kilda believes it can withstand the public glare as it continues to push for a second successive tilt at a premiership and that on the evidence made public this week is satisfied its players who were there on Christmas Eve behaved responsibly despite the admitted excessive alcohol intake of some.
The Saints rate their on-field leadership group as high as any in the competition and believe it would have handled the challenge of Cousins.
Instead, one year later, they took Lovett probably without sufficient due diligence and were challenged beyond their worst fears. Like Cousins, Lovett is ultimately responsible for his football downfall, but you have to wonder whether his former club Essendon and the players' association did enough to address his demons.
The AFL cannot have enjoyed seeing the lifestyles of some of its players so exposed this week, but I disagreed with Andrew Demetriou when he slammed Seven for advertising Cousins' documentary midweek during Packed To The Rafters while urging families to watch it.
Certainly Channel Seven's decision to flog Such Is Life was all about maximising promotion and sensationalising some more excruciating moments from the two-part documentary. But Rafters was the perfect environment in which to do that.
This is not your classic light family show. There has been plenty of darkness over the journey and the program's first serious storyline involved a graphic and often disturbing scenario of drug addiction, filmed sex, and associated violence and alcohol abuse.
I also disagreed with one commentator's assessment that Cousins has had to endure some nasty criticism over the past two years. The football public and the media - apart from some disproportionate tabloid scrutiny - has been generally, and overwhelmingly at times, supportive of his remarkable journey back to the AFL.
Cousins and Richmond have erred at times along the journey, but both are better for the experience. Having applauded Richmond for backing itself and its structures to take a fallen hero, I would say those structures at Tigerland are much stronger now having benefited not only from the experience but from the new personnel in the organisation.
I have also questioned in this column whether Cousins was worth the risk and still believe there have been plenty of times in which he demonstrated he was not. Drug addiction by its very nature is a life-long condition, but cannot excuse every misdemeanour where a club is concerned, and after what Richmond has been through over three decades the club must come first.
Still, the Tigers have indicated they are prepared to weather whatever comes their way via Cousins should the match committee deem him deserving of another season. And whatever the decision, that in itself says plenty for Richmond. Not to mention the player it handed - albeit nervously - one final chance.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/truth-is-stranger-than-fiction-20100814-12467.html
