THE AFL and its clubs are as responsible as all organisations for the welfare of their people. But they are not welfare agencies.

They have a duty of care, but they do not have a duty to take on new cares, and especially not if they think it might compromise their original pastoral duty to their existing people.

It is important to remember this in contemplating the Players Association's Pippa Grange's indignant condemnation of the AFL for failing Ben Cousins.

The AFL's first obligation is to run a football competition, the clubs' to win it. This does not excuse them a lack of compassion, but nor does it constrain them to act as charities.

Cousins' people say that playing football is important to his rehabilitation from drugs, but that did not and does not entitle him to the privilege of a place in the AFL, a privilege, remember, that was not taken from him wantonly, but that he forfeited in the first place.

In any case, if it is truly so that simply playing matters, he could resume at a lesser level.

With less pressure and less attendant fuss, perhaps that would be more beneficial anyway. But it does not appear to be on the agenda.

Cousins is a recovering drug addict, not recovered. The distinction is important now. Grange accuses the AFL of buckling to rhetorical pressure in imposing strict conditions on Cousins' return.

But the AFL says it acted on the advice of physicians, reportedly including Cousins' own. Surely she accepts that whatever agenda she suspects others of working to, the doctors had only Cousins' best interests at heart. Evidently, Cousins accepted it; he nominated for the draft.

The clubs rejected him any way. Their reasons were several: propitiation of sponsors and parents, concern about dicky hamstrings, recognition that his best days are past.

These are all hard footballing realities.

Cousins threw himself on the mercy of the AFL clubs, and found none to spare. It was not surprising, but nor was it derelict of them.

It is not hard to feel sorry for Cousins, but sympathy is not a draft prerequisite. Melbourne felt sorry for Luke Molan, the injury-cursed drop-out from the 2001 superdraft, whose story Peter Hanlon poignantly told in these pages last week, but not enough not to cut him loose. Cousins damaged himself betraying the game, Molan merely trying to play it, but no voice has been raised on his behalf claiming persecution.

Grange said the football community had a responsibility to Cousins.

That is undeniable, but it does not mean automatically reinstating him as a player. Grange said drug addiction was a still misunderstood illness.

The hothouse of an AFL club on premiership alert is surely not the place to explore it.

The AFL has failed Cousins, to the extent that it fails all who for all sorts of reasons do not measure up, to the extent that many others have failed him, too.

But the first person to fail Ben Cousins, on whom first falls the responsibility to redeem him, is Ben Cousins.