Ben Cousins is a previous expert Australian guidelines footballer who played for West Coast and Richmond in the Australian Football Association (AFL). Cousins is recorded by writer Mike Sheahan as one of the fifty biggest players ever. During his 12-year, 238-game vocation with West Coast, he won a few of the association’s most noteworthy individual honors, including a Brownlow Decoration, Most Important Player and a prevalence emblem. He was additionally chosen multiple times in the All-Australian Group and addressed Australia in the Worldwide Principles Series.
Cousins was West Coast’s club champion for four seasons and skipper for five seasons. His football profession was defaced by exceptionally exposed off-field episodes including sporting medication use, traffic convictions and relationship with criminal components. On a few events he was fined or endorsed by West Coast, finishing in his agreement’s end in October 2007. The next month, he was restricted from AFL for one year by the AFL Commission for “bringing the game into notoriety”. In the midst of expectations that he would remain undrafted, Richmond asserted Cousins with the last pick of the 2008 draft.
He played 32 games across two seasons at the club, resigning from the AFL toward the finish of the 2010 season. Cousins co-created a narrative film named That’s the short and long of it: The Pained Seasons of Ben Cousins, saying he trusted it would act as a wake up call against drug use. Delivered days after his retirement, it went onto become “perhaps of the most-watched narrative in Australian history.” Post-football, Cousins kept on battling with his illicit drug use and have spats with the law, and in 2017 he got a year jail sentence for various offenses.
| Name | Ben Cousins |
| Net Worth | $5 million |
| Occupation | Former rules footballer |
| Age | 44 years |
| Height | 1.79m |
Benjamin Luke Cousins was born on June 30, 1978 (age 44 years) in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. He is the child of Stephanie Cousins and Bryan Cousins, an Australian guidelines footballer who had moved from Western Australia to play for the Geelong Football Club in the Victorian Football Association. At the point when Cousins was year and a half old, his folks moved back to Perth, Western Australia, where he was raised with more youthful kin Matthew, Sophie and Melanie. He played junior football for the Bull Rivulet Leeming Junior Football Club and for his non-public school, Wesley School.
Cousins was selected to join the East Fremantle Football Club’s senior side in the West Australian Football Association (WAFL) in his last year at Wesley in 1995 and played for the two his school and East Fremantle all through the season. While Cousins was currently at school, three AFL groups contended to draft him under the dad child rule: the Geelong Football Club, the West Coast Hawks, and the recently framed Fremantle Football Club. Cousins’ dad Bryan played 238 games for Perth in the WAFL and 67 games for Geelong in the VFL during the 1970s and 1980s. Geelong’s enlisting chief, Stephen Wells, said, “Ben barracked for Geelong and we had a go at all that to get him here.” In any case, Cousins liked to stay situated in Western Australia and picked West Coast in October 1995.
Ben Cousins played his most memorable AFL match at 17, seven days after his 10th WAFL game for East Fremantle and kicked two objectives for West Coast against Geelong. He won the Norwich Rising Star grant for his presentation season in 1996, surveying 15 votes from the six adjudicators to beat Shannon Award by one. Cousins’ prominence kept on expanding over the accompanying seasons. In 1998, the Envoy Sun ran a two-page article across its middle pages around 20-year-old Cousins, named “West goes wild for the youngster”. The article depicted Cousins as a sex image and “football’s solution to Brad Pitt”. At the point when gotten some information about the article, he said the notoriety “goes with the job… If you need to be an association footballer you need to acknowledge that it is important for the game.”
Sports specialist Ricky Nixon moved toward Ben Cousins in 1998 about dealing with his underwriting bargains, since “He’s gorgeous, he chose for stay in Perth and not play in Victoria, resistance mentors consider him and on top of that he’s a future chief.” In 1999, Worldwide Administration Gathering, who oversaw sports stars, for example, Tiger Woods and Pete Sampras, said they might want to sign Ben, as “There is no question that he is presently in the top section of players and has extraordinary marketing potential… Aside from being an exceptional footballer, he is a quality young fellow.”
Ross Nicholas, West Coast’s marketing chief, said: “He’s effectively the most pursued Bird… No player was, or alternately is, as famous as Ben. His allure is so various. Kids need his signature and photo. Supports believe he should sit close to them. They believe he should promote their item… Assuming Ben’s all around made due, the sky’s the most ideal breaking point for him… They must track down the harmony between his business potential and his commitment to the local area. The club offers security, yet it ultimately depends on Ben what requests he puts himself under.”
Ben Cousins was chosen in the All-Australian Group in 1998 and was sprinter up in West Coast’s Ideal and Most attractive. He played in his most memorable AFL finals game in 1999, against the Western Bulldogs in a passing last at the MCG, and the year remembered one more determination for the All-Australian Group and addressing Australia in the Worldwide Principles Series. In 2000, Cousins marked another three-year contract with the West Coast Falcons, apparently worth almost A$1 million.
Cousins played his 100th game in the midst of hypothesis he would assume control over the captaincy from Fellow McKenna, who was expected to resign after a similar game. Cousins said, “After you play a few seasons, you consider the chance of an influential position down the track, yet its discussion has unquestionably come significantly sooner than I would have naturally suspected.” In 2001, Cousins was named co-skipper, offering the job to Senior member Kemp. He won his most memorable club Best and Most attractive toward the finish of the time, an accomplishment which he rehashed in 2002 and 2003, and he was again named in the All-Australian Group in 2001 and 2002. Kemp’s retirement saw Cousins become the skipper in 2002, a job he filled until 2006.
In 2005, West Coast mentor John Worsfold said of Cousins’ fifth year as chief, “Ben is working on constantly and with the way this gathering is going along, I think he will be an extraordinary pioneer”. In mid 2003, Cousins harmed his lower leg in a game against Hawthorn yet played on through five weeks of torment killing infusions. In Cycle 15, 2004, he harmed his back and missed six games. Cousins said, “That injury is something that I moved past and am likely zero chance of getting a backslide… The opposite side to it is, on the grounds that I have played 10 years of reliable AFL footy, I’ve presumably got a more seasoned back than somebody my age”. In Cycle 1, 2005, he separated a finger and missed one round subsequent to going through an activity. West Coast CEO Trevor Nesbitt said, “There’s no question that he’s at his best when under tension and he’s so tough; he plays with wounds that different players wouldn’t”.
After Ben Cousins played his 200th game in July 2005 he was given a “energizing gathering from 41,524 thankful fans”, as video clasps of his decade at West Coast were displayed toward the finish of the game. Cousins was “conceivably the most prominent athlete in Western Australia”, the most youthful of the 10 West Coast players to arrive at 200 games and the fourteenth most youthful throughout the entire existence of the AFL/VFL. Cousins won the Brownlow Decoration, the AFL’s most noteworthy individual player grant, on 19 September 2005 with 20 votes, in front of colleague Daniel Kerr on 19 votes and Nick Dal Santo on 18 votes.
Cousins was the number one to win with bookmakers, after five past top-10 completions. He didn’t go to the honor service in Melbourne, staying in Perth to get ready for West Coast’s Excellent Last match against Sydney Swans the next end of the week. His festival was “exceptionally calm, I headed toward the bar, purchased the people a container of champagne, had one lemonade and went up to the (lodging. I figured out how to get to rest before 12 PM, which was a reward.” West Coast’s last instructional meeting in Perth prior to heading out to their most memorable Fabulous Last game starting around 1994 was gone to by 3,000 fans. Trevor Nesbitt, West Coast’s CEO, said he expected that the mix of the group’s Excellent Last debut, Cousins’ Brownlow win, and Chris Judd’s Brownlow win in the earlier year, would prompt a turnover of around $2 million in club stock.
West Coast lost the 2005 Thousand Last to Sydney by four, however as well as his Brownlow win, Cousins was granted another West Coast Best and Most attractive and the players’ Most Significant Player grant, with 159 votes contrasted with second place Matthew Pavlich’s 99 votes. He was sprinter up to Barry Lobby in the mentors’ player of the year grant, and in measurements, had 612 removals, 24 objectives, and positioned in the main five of the association in nine of the 12 classifications.
Ben Cousins surrendered his captaincy in February 2006 after an off-field episode where he escaped a liquor transport. In May 2006, he marked another three-year contract with West Coast, and in September 2006, West Coast won the Fantastic Last, crushing Sydney by one. Cousins was suspended endlessly by West Coast on 20 Walk 2007 in the wake of missing two instructional courses. It was subsequently affirmed that Cousins had a substance misuse issue. Subsequent to getting back from about a month of recovery in Malibu, California, for substance misuse, Cousins was offered a changed agreement by West Coast, reputed to contain severe circumstances, for example, reimbursing the expense of recovery and undertaking standard medication tests.