When news filtered out the other day that former Eagles Ben Cousins and Michael Gardiner would be at the same club again next year, the obvious and slightly funny quip to make was whether the club in question would be Eve, Boutique, Prince Of Wales, Robata or any of the other Melbourne nightspots commonly frequented by the AFL’s glitterati.
Evidently, the report in question was in reference to news that St. Kilda are deciding whether to make a play for Cousins in this year’s pre-season draft under the naive assumptions that pairing him with his former partner in crime wouldn’t be detrimental to Cousins’ prospects of successful rehabilitation, as well as the even more ridiculous notion that the Saints are just one player away from a premiership.
The St. Kilda football department, led by a delegation of coach Ross Lyon and football manager Matthew Drain, will meet Cousins again next week to inspect the former star centreman for train tracks on his arms.
If they like what they see, Lyon and Drain will then front the St. Kilda board to ask whether they can draft Cousins.
The board will also be asked to try and stay awake for more than three minutes when Lyon is talking; a feat beyond most journalists who have attended one of his press conferences this year and/or been forced to watch the patented cure for insomnia that is Lyon’s game plan.
Lyon has already met Cousins personally to canvas the prospect of him returning to the game via the Saints. Presumably Lyon’s key selling point was the fact that he can guarantee Cousins career highs in short kicks and uncontested marks based on a game plan that involves kicking the ball backwards and sideways repeatedly until Nick Riewoldt has made a lead that has left him no less than 25 metres in the clear.
According to Lyon, “we’re all interested in Ben Cousins, but what I’d like to say is that’s clearly in the hands of the AFL Commission (to allow him to play). Ben’s health is a priority, but everyone deserves a second chance.”
Actually, we made the last past of that sentence up as we’d drifted off after ten seconds of listening to Lyon’s monotone drone that makes Phillip Ruddock sound like Chris Rock.
If Cousins needed further convincing the Saints are fair dinkum when it comes to offering discarded players a second chance, he only needs to look at the fact St. Kilda traded for Aaron Fiora in 2004 for reasons which to this day remain indeterminable but obviously do not include an ability to get a hard ball or provide any form of defensive pressure.
The Saints have already taken care of one half of their prospective partnership by re-signing Gardiner to an additional one-year contract based on a paltry nine games over two seasons. When the alternative is having Justin Koschitzke take a turn in the ruck, this decision becomes negligibly clearer.
What is most puzzling is St. Kilda’s apparent penchant for recruiting the entire list of AFL Rising Stars from 1996 and 1997 with Cousins potentially joining Gardiner and former Geelong ruckman Steven King.
Where Lyon decides to play Craig Biddiscombe, Daniel Bandy, Kingsley Hunter, Luke Toia, Stefan Carey and Bowen Lockwood remains a mystery but considering he found room for Fiora in a side contesting a preliminary final, only a fool would rule out the above names making a comeback at Moorabin next season.
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