THE football world has always believed there are two John Worsfolds. As a player, the cliche was of him as one of the game's most bitterly aggressive defenders, prone to verbal abuse and the none-too-occasional lack of discipline, while away from the field of battle, he wore a white coat as a bespectacled mild-mannered pharmacist.

As a coach, he has been capable of wearing one of football's most sheepish charming smiles and yet he admits now he has engaged several minders - some official, some less so - to remain on "grumpy alert" or, in the words of his chief executive Trevor Nisbett, to "stop him from getting the sours".

And so it is an intriguing new feature of West Coast's spectacular fall from grace that the two Worsfolds have now stepped out in public to face each other. The coach, once so paranoid about giving nothing away that his media appearances at times were a complete waste of time, has become increasingly open of late.

So much so that after the Western Bulldogs thrashing six nights ago, he was castigated in these pages for waving the white flag after only six rounds of football when he said that for the Eagles to make the finals would be a struggle and that the top four was now out of the question.

But perhaps Worsfold's most bitter internal struggle remains over what he could or should have done as the Ben Cousins-led off-field deterioration threatened to engulf the club.

Worsfold admits it was a testing time for him and an issue that still haunts him. AFL coaches are not famous for self-doubt but this one now admits he has asked himself the question many times.

"I know there are people who think we put a premiership ahead of our players' welfare and I don't accept that," said Worsfold, still, after all, a defender, who does not turn 40 until September. "Of course I still wonder what I could have done better or what we should have done.

"Should we have been the leaders in a social problem that now all the clubs are working to improve? At the time, we didn't see it as our role but of course, we could have been tougher.

"You know yourself how hard these things are to prove. Do you drop every player you suspect of using illicit drugs? Do you sack them after one positive drug test? Do you even know for sure when you suspect individuals but have no proof?

"I do know that I've learnt a lot from all of this and I've read all of the reports and I'm happy to take the feedback and I wasn't afraid or ashamed of it. I believe that many of those things were not in my control."

One subject over which there is no question for Worsfold now is that of Cousins. Asked why he thinks his former captain has not returned to a lower grade of football, Worsfold says he has no idea.

"We've been in touch on the phone maybe twice since the season started but my only job now is to be a friend," he said. "I can't help him with his football. That part of the association is finished."

No coach in the AFL has ridden a rollercoaster so steep as Worsfold has over the past three years. Two grand finals, the second one yielding a premiership, followed by a scandalous off-field 2007 season so dreadful, disruptive and crippling to the team that it seems remarkable the Eagles came so close to a preliminary final.

Cousins, the champion labelled the club's spiritual leader, spiralled out of control with a drug addiction that appears to have destroyed his career and tainted the team, captain Chris Judd quit and a series of other player-related social problems joined the Cousins tragedy to threaten West Coast with draft sanctions and the stripping of premiership points.

It was a time that tested the AFL and its drug and disciplinary codes. Clearly, it was a testing time for the team, which is now playing as if it bears both the physical scars of losing champion teammates and the emotional cuts of repeated negative scrutiny.

For the first time in this, his seventh season as the Eagles coach, Worsfold's team looks in grave danger of missing the finals. The club's percentage is woeful - only Melbourne's is worse - and the club which takes on the Judd-led Carlton at Subiaco tonight finds itself in unfamiliar territory at 15th on the ladder.

Players have quit, retired (forcibly so) and been sacked and the injuries have been mounting. Now Daniel Kerr has been suspended for three weeks. The new leadership group has a whole new culture with which to deal, a new set of guidelines and structures and a team that has to a man signed a new code of conduct exclusive to West Coast.

Off-field, there have also been rumours suggesting a fallout with Nisbett. Not only was Worsfold said to have delivered a stinging attack on certain players immediately after the season-ending extra-time loss to Collingwood at Subiaco last September, Nisbett is believed to have blasted Worsfold and his assistants for an ordinary performance.

Worsfold said the former was partly true, the latter completely false. "If Nissie (Nisbett) had criticised me or the coaches or our performances, I think I would have remembered that," he said. "I'll go to Nissie and say I disagree with this or that and often we end up not agreeing but we've always been like that since I was captain under Mick (Malthouse) and he was the footy manager."

Nisbett went further: "John and I have always had the same vision but we disagree on plenty of things. An example? When he was a player, I often felt he overdid it with his aggression, which saw him give away free kicks. I'd discuss it with him and he felt differently. In the end, I had to accept that was just part of his game.

"There'll be times now when I see something of real commercial value to the club like a player doing a certain piece of community work. John might say, 'That doesn't fit in with our training program' and I'll get the sads for a few days and that will be that. In the end, it will be his call but of course we have our disagreements."

Worsfold added: "I would describe our relationship as very strong. Nissie's a tremendously loyal person who supports me very strongly. He was in the room the night after we lost to Collingwood. Everyone was, the players, the directors, the drug testers - everyone.

"Someone leaks out that Ben (Cousins) and I were toe to toe. It wasn't like that at all. People were surprised that I would deliver some home truths to players like Ben and Chad (Fletcher) and Daniel (Kerr). I don't know why they would be surprised after what we'd been through."

Several weeks later, in a crippling end to the season, Worsfold also lost his friend and two-time premiership teammate Chris Mainwaring to a mysterious and apparently drug-related death. "He was a very good friend," Worsfold said. "Not a, 'What are you doing next weekend, let's catch up friend', but someone you'll always value because of what you've been through together. Like a lot of my past teammates.

"It was very very sad. There's a lot of people at the club who were very close to Chris and it did hurt the club. We've had a spate of four or five others at the club or very close to the club who we've lost to cancer, too, and it has definitely hurt us."

Now West Coast has emerged from two investigations, one instigated by the club and the other the AFL. The fallout has prompted the competition to pledge to establish an off-field disciplinary tribunal, which will deal with serious misdemeanours the league believes clubs are incapable of handling.

And the AFL will also soon introduce a new "Personal Responsibility Policy", which will include rule change written into players' contracts. The new code of conduct has every club but West Coast enter with a clean slate.

"I don't think we wanted a clean slate because we weren't planning to commit the kind of misdemeanours which would need one," Worsfold said. "But you would think that if you were bringing in a new code, then everyone would be treated equally.

"I guess an analogy would be if the government introduced a new tax rule and declared an amnesty on all tax cheats except one. But I haven't put much thought to it because, as I said, I don't expect us to re-offend."

If Worsfold's coaching high point came with the thrilling 2006 flag, then his lowest point as a coach involved an training fracas with the media in which he publicly lost control and subsequently was filmed swearing at a group of journalists.

"It's not something I like to be reminded of or talk about but I have tried to improve since then," he said. "That was something that was in my control."

Tim Gepp, the West Australian-born former Richmond and Footscray footballer who has long been a football powerbroker at West Coast, was promoted to match committee chairman on the eve of 2008 in a move regarded as something of a watchdog role over the coach by the club's controlling West Australian Football Commission.

But Worsfold denies any element of "Big Brother". "I was the one who wanted a match committee chairman," he said. "I've never been much of a delegator but I'm getting better at that all the time. I expect him to give me feedback if I'm looking grumpy and I need a football person dealing with players and their off-field issues like media appearances.

"There's been talk I'm being watched but a lot of that is generated in the Perth media because Judgey (Worsfold's predecessor Ken Judge) fell out with Tim when he was coaching and Judgey is now a prominent media commentator and he'll make some comment. I don't usually respond because I don't see any need to respond to every little thing."

Like Paul Roos, Worsfold does not see himself as a career coach. When asked, he entertains another career in business or community work. "I don't mean politics but I would like to make an impact on another part of the community," he said. Unlike Roos, who has hinted at a seven-year term at Sydney, Worsfold does not see any finite time frame.

"My plan," he said, "my hope is to be a part of our next premiership. Hopefully, that will come this year, although to be honest, it's unlikely."