Benny Be Good, or, Chad's not dead he's just gone to bed

He hasn’t returned a positive drug test. He hasn’t made a public admission. He hasn’t been charged in any drug related crimes. Yet there is mounting circumstantial evidence that Ben Cousins is a drug user, I mean, look at that haircut.

The West Coast Eagles yesterday suspended him indefinitely to work out ‘private and personal issues’, which most assume to be code for ‘getting over his drug problem’. Whether it is or not, we don’t know. However, over the past couple of years there has been a long list of off-field incidents involving West Coast players and brawls, taxi drivers, booze buses, each other and in Las Vegas, apparently a flat-line. So it’s probably fair to award the Eagles as off-field premiers as well. And this is where it is interesting; that despite all this, they are the reigning premiers, the favourite to win it all again and Cousins is one year removed from winning the Brownlow. Now, does that sound like a drug problem?

How many clubs do you think would invite the off-field scandal that West Coast has had over the past couple of years if it also meant the on-field success they’ve had? Most, I’d imagine, I mean, Carlton for sure, seeing as though their captain is into beating women and killing family members already, may as well win a few games too.

You see, I think it’s important that we remember what the drug testing policy is for; to prevent players, or indeed clubs, from gaining unfair advantage by using performance enhancing drugs such as steroids and HGH. Somewhere along the line the AFL decided to test for ‘recreational’ drugs as well, I don’t know, perhaps the rationale being ‘we don’t want you to enhance your performance with drugs, but we don’t want you to diminish it with drugs either’.

So Benny broke up with his girlfriend and went on a bit of a bender, big deal, is it really news these days that a male in his 20’s uses drugs? The media immediately, and predictably, leapt into an outrage, Mike Sheahan and Caroline Wilson knowing no other emotions, writing critical columns and condemning Cousins for throwing away his career and setting a bad example. But I wonder if any of them have missed work for being hungover.

What’s worse are those pretending to care for Cousins the man, not the footballer. ‘Rescue the Person’ and ‘Support Him’ are some of the sentiments I’ve seen already, only two days after this story broke. Call me cynical, but do these people actually know anything about what happened?

How many of you are drug-tested at work? Unless there are some policemen and women reading I’d venture to say none of you. And fair enough too, what I do on my private time it’s nobody’s business at the office, especially if I am excelling at my job, if I had say, just lead my team to a premiership and the year before won the Brownlow medal.

The AFL say, that as part of their support for players in life and not just the sport, they want to rehabilitate players that test positive for recreational drugs. Does your work do that? Let the players work it out themselves. If Cousins is good enough to do even half the amount of drugs the media is leading us to believe and still perform as one of the best 5 players in the league then good luck to him. If not, he’ll find himself out of job like the rest of us would. Of course, there’s always Carlton.