Support for Cousins in Tigers' den
Courtney Walsh | December 13, 2008
The Australian
AFL Players Association boss Brendon Gale believes his former club Richmond has the support systems in place to cope with drafting disgraced star Ben Cousins.
The Tigers emerged as a surprise candidate to revive the former West Coast captain's career this week when details of a request to place Graham Polak, who is recovering from a brain injury, on its rookie list emerged on Wednesday.
While the AFL commission will rule on Richmond's request on Monday, the Tigers can still select the recovering drug addict regardless in Tuesday's pre-season draft despite coach Terry Wallace previously declaring they had earmarked another player for their pick.
Gale, who has been a strong advocate of the 2005 Brownlow medallist returning to football, said yesterday he hoped Cousins received a lifeline in what is his final chance after clubs shunned him at last month's national draft.
"We work closely with all AFL clubs in that off-field support, career and education and I think Richmond is pretty strong," he said. "I think the arrangements they have had in place for a while are very strong and supportive of all players in their off-field development and I would be very confident in their ability to support all players and, in particular, someone with complex issues like Ben.
"I am not a clinician but based on the advice we have received, I think it would be a really important stage of his next phase, his rehabilitation, to have that structure and and motivating environment of a football club and I think it would be a really good support for Ben right now."
AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou yesterday refused to pre-empt what will happen in either Monday's commission meeting regarding Polak or Tuesday's pre-season draft.
"We've given the green light for Ben Cousins to play," he said.
"I'm not aware of what Richmond's doing other than they've put a submission that relates to Graham Polak.
"So what they're thinking (in regards to the draft) I'm not privy to and we'll wait and see."
Should the commission rule in favour of giving Richmond permission to place Polak, who was hit by a tram in June but is too old to be placed on the rookie list under present rules, on its rookie list the Tigers will have two picks in Tuesday's draft.
But some clubs have questioned whether Polak deserves a special exemption -- granted only once before to recently retired Bomber Adam Ramanauskas as he battled cancer -- while others are furious with the timing of the request, saying Richmond have known of the condition for months and also had the opportunity to draft Cousins last month.
At least one club chief executive is convinced the commission will deny Richmond its request, although Gale believes it has merit and does not believe the Tigers' motives are questionable.
"Graham sustained a very serious brain injury and is taking a long and sustained rehabilitation and he is not in a position to be playing, certainly in the short term, so we support that and I guess most importantly, we acknowledged that Graham supports that as well," he said.
"We are not in a position to question (Richmond's) motives and clubs are free to form their own opinion on that, but they put the request in and we think the reasons behind it are very sound.
"Governing bodies have rules, but we have got to have discretions to help them deal with difficult and complicated circumstances. This is clearly one of them.
"We are not talking about a football-related injury here, this is serious brain injury sustained in very strange circumstances. I think we need to be a little flexible in dealing with it."
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