By Sam Lienert
October 10th 2008 @ 1:59am
Cousins too great a risk, says Buckley
Former Collingwood captain Nathan Buckley says Ben Cousins poses too great a risk to be worth drafting because of his age and personal history.
Both Collingwood and St Kilda have shown interest in the 30-year-old former West Coast skipper, who still needs to convince the AFL he has sufficiently recovered from drug addiction to be allowed to return to the game.
But Buckley, who retired last year after becoming the Magpies’ longest serving captain, said if it was up to him the club would not take a punt on Cousins.
“No, (he’s a) little bit too old,” Buckley told Melbourne radio station 3AW.
“He’s probably got one or two good seasons left in him and that’s if he comes back cherry ripe, because I know how quickly the game has changed in recent years.
“He’s missed a lot of football and that’s not to mention the issues that you’re going to have or you may have with him personally.
“I think if he does become available to a club he’ll be in good nick because the AFL will have ticked him off … but on top of that it will still be risk, a football risk to a footy club because of his age.”
Cousins, a 238-game premiership star, has been serving a 12-month ban since last November for bringing the game into disrepute.
The AFL Commission is expected to make a decision by mid-November on whether to allow him to return and if so under what conditions.
Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse, who previously coached Cousins at the Eagles, and Magpies football manager Geoff Walsh met Cousins in Perth last month.
St Kilda’s board will also discuss the possibility of drafting him at a meeting next week.
“We do have to wait and find out exactly what the AFL are going to do,” Saints board member Nathan Burke told Melbourne radio station SEN.
“They haven’t made up their minds just yet so that may pre-empt everything that we’ve got in place.
“We’ve got a board meeting next Thursday night and I daresay it may come up as a topic there.
“The thing that is in our favour, obviously, is that the pre-season draft doesn’t take place until December this year, so there’s a lot of water to go under the bridge between now and then - a lot of checks, a lot of (rubber) stamping by the AFL.
“We’ll just go through that process and see what comes out at the end of it, but I’m sure it will be discussed next Thursday night.”
The commission is expected to discuss the case at a meeting on Monday, as a precursor to making their decision.
Burke said the conditions placed on Cousins’ return would be an important consideration.
“Obviously if you do get a player like Ben and the AFL say ‘He’s got his (two) strikes, one more and he’s out’ what does that do with our investment in him as a player?” he said.
“That’s where the homework and the due diligence around his mental state and his state of health at the time will come into play.”
If Cousins is to make a comeback, he will have to nominate for either the November 29 national draft or more likely the December 16 pre-season draft.
Free Email updates:
Our daily emails are only sent if there is content for the sport or that author. You can subscribe to multiple daily emails; or get the daily Roar email with all our content in it. We value privacy. More...
