CHRIS Mainwaring was sitting quietly on the banks of Fremantle Oval, watching an autumn evening training session of rival club the Dockers, when he revealed his dark secret.

Despite a successful new career in the television commentator's box, the life of the West Coast legend was on the brink of collapse, personal problems compounded by the fear of financial ruin and worries about a friend. When a colleague inquired innocently, the story just slipped out.

Mainwaring cast back 12 years to his 30th birthday when, instead of reflecting on achievements, he was trying to exorcise the demons threatening to destroy his future.

Concerned that a drug habit was spinning out of control, the dual premiership player refused to invite the people feeding his growing habit to a private party. It was a signal that he wanted to break away.

But when Mainwaring and his guests turned up to a city nightclub, the "gangsters" were there, lined up in a guard of honour and demanding to know why they hadn't been invited.

"When you become their mate, it's until they decide it's over," he recounted sadly, insisting he had freed himself eventually.

The story was a confession of sorts, not only about his own life, but to explain the fears he held for the modern-day champion Ben Cousins, who had returned a few days earlier from a month's rehabilitation in California after falling to the same demons.

Five months later, Mainwaring is dead, killed by a cocktail of drugs including cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis, Roaccutane, anti-depressants and alcohol, and Cousins has been sacked and faces an uncertain future.

Many in Australia's most controversial sporting club would deny Mainwaring took anything worse than marijuana and too much alcohol during his career.

But others say those denials are why the club is engulfed in such crisis, and insist the problems run deeper into the senior playing list than Cousins and teammate Daniel Chick; the latter caught up in this week's arrest, released without charge but delisted by the club.

Sources close to the club this week recounted watching players smoke marijuana in nightclubs and admissions by players to using ecstasy during the off-season because it was easy to evade lax testing procedures. A former player told The Age he was told to "Shut your f---ing mouth" when he complained about the problem.

There is evidence of infiltration by criminals, including drug dealers and the Coffin Cheaters bikie gang, accounts of a player "flatlining" in Las Vegas after a drug overdose, claims of cover-ups and betrayal, behind-the-scenes beratings and many accounts of bitter dressing-room exchanges and public punch-ups between "the druggies" and non-users.

Drug-takers are claimed to have bragged about encouraging others into their groups.

But in front of the cameras, senior administrators have fought tooth and nail to downplay the problem. Some deny it still.

Coach and former champion John Worsfold says eight players have told him they had tried drugs, but others say the figure is much higher and the public is owed an independent investigation. Long-serving administrators such as chief executive Trevor Nisbett are singled out as having failed to tackle the problem earlier.

The Age has been given the names of several prominent players so far untouched publicly by the drama who are battling their own drug problems. The names have been confirmed by several sources.

When asked to list the players, one insider replied: "It's easier to name the players who haven't at least dabbled. The one saving grace is that the outing of Ben Cousins may have saved them from the same fate."

The story of Cousins and the Eagles is one of power, privilege and victory. Conversely, it is also one of secrecy, denial and ultimately self-destruction.

From the moment it was created in 1987, the club was different. It did not have members but investors, owned by a publicly listed company to raise the multimillion-dollar fee for its entry into Victoria's big league.

The interloper had an entire city — Perth — as its fan base. The result was a Hollywood-like fishbowl in which players were feted and adored by a state that wore its geographical isolation as a badge.

Success followed quickly, with two premierships in its first eight seasons and a string of 10 successive years in the finals under coach Mick Malthouse. Not even the creation of a second club, the Dockers, could significantly alter the dominance of the Eagles.

Then the wheels fell off in a tussle over control and direction of the club between the private owners and the local football commission.

The club's chief executive, Brian Cook, resigned, as did the club president, prominent hotelier Murray McHenry. Then Malthouse left and suddenly the club was adrift, its players, coaching staff and administration in disarray.

The club wandered in the football wilderness for the next two seasons, finishing 13th and 14th under new coach Ken Judge, who fought a debilitating injury list and a poor player roster.

A few weeks after the end of his first season, Judge received a telephone call, understood to be from a police officer, warning him that two players— the emerging champion Cousins and ruckman Michael Gardiner — had been caught on a police telephone tap arranging to buy drugs.

Judge immediately told the club. The two players were confronted and denied the claim. The next season, Cousins was made captain and Gardiner vice-captain. Judge was sacked.

The decision was the turning point and had far-reaching repercussions, say several insiders, who say it turned Cousins, already a young man who believed himself to be invincible, into a leader who believed he was godlike and untouchable.

It also gave a green light to other impressionable young men at the club. "Ben was handsome, he was the best player and he was the coolest man in the club. Others were bound to follow him. It was inevitable," an insider said.

Judge will not comment but others, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say drug problems already existed when he arrived. Some senior players openly smoked marijuana, and a minority, such as Mainwaring, experimented with cocaine. Nightclubbing and boozing was common.

Nisbett has acknowledged there was drug use as far back as the early 1990s, albeit minor, that the club tried to monitor. But others say he and board members failed to tackle what would soon become a runaway problem. "Maybe the explanation is that they simply didn't understand the drug world," one offered.

Club fortunes turned with Judge's demise, albeit slowly. Under Worsfold, the team made the finals in 2002 but it would take three years to become a real force again. Meanwhile, the drug culture took hold behind the scenes in a far more serious way.

In 2001, players were caught in drug squad operations during which they used code words, such as "ironing", to order drugs from a convicted dealer. In 2002, police tapes emerged of two Eagles players (Cousins and Gardiner) linking them with crime figures associated with the Melbourne gang scene. An internal club investigation cleared the players.

McHenry acknowledges Cousins has played his last game. "I really like the kid," he said.

"When he's doing what he does best, he feels invincible."

Said another Eagles insider: "That's the nature of drug addicts. They lie and cheat."