IT SEEMS there was little surprise in the 12-month disqualification imposed on Ben Cousins this week by the AFL. The hardliners wanted life while the liberals argued that Cousins needed support, not punishment. The AFL Commission opted for the middle ground and few questions were asked.
There are questions raised by this outcome, though, that should be aired. For the first time, a player has been suspended by the AFL for behaviour that has nothing to do with his sporting conduct.
Why such a massive penalty — the biggest imposed on a senior VFL/AFL footballer for any offence in more than 75 years? Why single out the issue of social drugs? Will football now be just as responsive to players with gambling and alcohol habits, and those guilty of off-field violence? Why has the AFL chosen to do as few other industries would — deny a high-performing employee his job because of his extra-curricular activity?
Will non-playing football figures found guilty of social misconduct have the same standards applied to them? Exactly what did Cousins do between his last game on September 7 and the AFL's charging him on November 2 that brought the game into disrepute?
The period of suspension imposed on Cousins — and it is a suspension, not a period of rehabilitation — could run to as many as 30 games. Cousins' former club, West Coast, played 25 matches in 2007. The last player so heftily penalised was Carlton's Tommy Downs, who missed 29 games after being found guilty of kicking in 1931.
More recently, Phil Carman received a 16-game suspension for head-butting an umpire in 1980. This execrable breach of the essence of sport, a violent assault on an official, was captured graphically by television cameras, widely broadcast and had great potential to damage the game's reputation. Cousins' culpability has been judged at about 50% greater than that.
In 1996, Justin Charles also received 16 weeks for wilful steroid use. Athletes who knowingly use performance-enhancing drugs commit the most grievous of crimes against sport. They undermine the very fabric of the industry that feeds and glorifies them. They cheat their peers and defraud the public. It is almost inconceivable that a performer's off-field lifestyle, unless it was one seriously punished by law, would bring a 50% greater penalty than one imposed for the spreading of this cancer.
Yet that is precisely what the AFL has decreed. Bearing in mind that its priorities are such that it pays for twice as many tests a year for illicit drugs as it does for performance-enhancing drugs, perhaps the AFL has lost sight of its fundamental purpose.
That Cousins has been stripped of his earning power is another extreme outcome of this week's decision. Normally, a disqualified player would remain in the employ of his club during his period on the sidelines. In this case, the AFL and West Coast have ensured that Cousins can't be employed within the AFL for 12 months. What other industry would ostracise one of its own, one who had provided outstanding service, for a lifestyle issue that had brought no legal charges?
On the matter of the AFL's targeting of social drug-taking, it now runs a grave risk of appearing to be a selective moral arbiter. Moreover, it easily could be seen to be responding to the section of society that barks loudest. There have been, and will continue to be, elite-level footballers with gambling, drinking and other behavioural problems. Some great players could be named. Yet the AFL has chosen to intervene only on drugs. This one group is thus further stigmatised.
There also have been, and will continue to be, senior football administrators whose private or even public activities have the potential to inflict damage on the game's reputation. How could the AFL now possibly justify inaction on such cases?
Ben Cousins has lost at least a year of his football life. This is not about consistency, fairness or, as the AFL would have us believe, social leadership. It is about pragmatism and image.
