BEN Cousins' dismissal, decided by the West Coast board and ratified by a shattered competition boss Andrew Demetriou, was a termination laced with sorrow, regret and not a little finger-pointing.

The Federal Government used the revelation that Cousins had lapsed to again criticise the AFL's apparently flawed illicit drugs policy, while the AFL subtly laid blame in the direction of the recently delisted Eagle Daniel Chick.

Player manager Ricky Nixon, who has spoken with Cousins more than once over the past 24 hours, accused commentators of dancing upon Cousins' grave while the 2005 Brownlow medallist did what he does almost as well as play football and that was to hide away.

Two days ago, Cousins — who has run from police before, denied his drug addiction and his relationship with the Perth underworld and spent several weeks at a clinic in Malibu — refused a routine police drug-testing procedure that led to charges relating to a Valium-style sedative. He will face court today.

Demetriou — who had continually claimed, along with Nixon, that Cousins was almost ready to apologise for the damage he had done to his family, club and code — was in Monaco with his No. 2 Gillon McLachlan at a conference.

Outgoing West Coast chairman Dalton Gooding told The Age that the decision was taken over a two-hour board meeting that began at 3pm and included Demetriou speaking from Monaco along with Gooding and at least one other West Coast director from overseas.

"The whole Cousins issue is just so sad," said Gooding last night. "He had made such progress and we felt he had made such a successful comeback. A detailed discussion took place and many matters were taken into account from a club, an AFL and a legal perspective.

"This is the last thing anyone wanted to happen. I just feel so sorry for his parents. They've been through hell. They thought they had this terrible situation under control and obviously it wasn't."

The 29-year-old would have to apply to enter the AFL draft, with the application unlikely to be approved by the AFL, which must deal with the reality of the parents of young footballers unwilling to have their sons play for the Eagles.

Gooding, speaking from Italy, ends his term as chairman on October 31. He agreed that sacking Cousins was a dreadful way to end his leadership of the club.

The AFL view was that Cousins had been clean and regularly drug tested — three times a week, in fact — until last week when it is believed he moved in with Chick, a footballer delisted recently by West Coast and unlikely to resurrect his career.

Chick had caused problems at his former club Hawthorn and clearly was delisted for reasons beyond his 31 years. He was at the scene of one of Cousins' more blatant indiscretions in March this year and not far from the former captain two days ago when police stopped both in separate cars in the nightclub district of Northbridge.

An alternative view has been that Cousins has been unrepentant and somehow cleverly avoiding detection from drug testers for weeks. Another reason provided for his relapse was the death of Chris Mainwaring, a friend who Cousins visited shortly before he died and whose coffin Cousins helped carry earlier this month.

The truth seems irrelevant now, as does the AFL's threat back in April to strip the Eagles of points or draft picks should they transgress again. That is now certain not to happen given Demetriou's support of the club and its handling of Cousins.

The AFL chief interviewed the player and later claimed him as a success story. He might have been deluded and the Eagles might have refused for years to face the truth, but how relevant is all that now in what clearly is just another human tragedy involving a hopeless drug addict?

West Coast has other problems now. No parent would happily send their child to the club — particularly not if they lived outside Perth — and onfield the club has lost its two best midfielders and probably the two best in the competition.

Other players, including two of its best performers in 2007, have reportedly been living it up on the dark side in the weeks after the gripping loss to Collingwood and the club must look seriously at eradicating the place of all the cancers that have crept through it over the years.

The AFL's drug policy will face scrutiny again but the league will wait until after the election, hoping that a Labor victory and a change of heart will save it, and so it should.

Cousins is a problem beyond policy. A hopeless case who has avoided positive detection for years, his story is in the hands of his family now.