Ben Cousins does it again

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Still would have been a better PSD pick than Skipworth...

with the devlopment of all the players skipworth has had a hand in i think not…tigers cut connors and would have cut martin too if he was a fringe player.

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Still would have been a better PSD pick than Skipworth...

with the devlopment of all the players skipworth has had a hand in i think not…tigers cut connors and would have cut martin too if he was a fringe player.

This is what i don't understand about recruiting players solely for " experience". The question i asked at the time was would he improve them beyond what those players would develop into anyway without his guidance. Those that wanted cousins proclaimed he would set the standard for the tigers training and professionalism and blah blah and would speed up their development. What is it now 3 years down the track and Richmond are still the same basket case we are on the road to becoming and he didn't change much if anything.

To be fair Connors and Martin seemed like wankers to begin with, so you can’t really blame cousins for turning them that way.

All in all teaching experience is the coaching panels job, it should never really be a players biggest attribute come game day. Looking back really neither probably should have been picked up.

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This is getting sadder and sadder. What a fall from grace. I hope he gets the care he needs and has friends and family around him. He is a public demonstration of someone being systematically destroyed by drugs.

OK, this is true and it is sad. Many people have had their lives destroyed by alcohol addiction and it has been going on for many many years. Its not really fashionable to talk about it these days. The focus has been taken off it. Its still there, its still a freely available drug

Lay off Skippy. His off field worth is more than enough, especially given that he is still at the club, has mentored various players and continues to embody what we at Essendon stand for.

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This is getting sadder and sadder. What a fall from grace. I hope he gets the care he needs and has friends and family around him. He is a public demonstration of someone being systematically destroyed by drugs.

OK, this is true and it is sad. Many people have had their lives destroyed by alcohol addiction and it has been going on for many many years. Its not really fashionable to talk about it these days. The focus has been taken off it. Its still there, its still a freely available drug

Addiction is addiction. Does the substance (or behaviour) matter?

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This is getting sadder and sadder. What a fall from grace. I hope he gets the care he needs and has friends and family around him. He is a public demonstration of someone being systematically destroyed by drugs.

OK, this is true and it is sad. Many people have had their lives destroyed by alcohol addiction and it has been going on for many many years. Its not really fashionable to talk about it these days. The focus has been taken off it. Its still there, its still a freely available drug

Addiction is addiction. Does the substance (or behaviour) matter?
Yes. Some addictions (and substances) are a lot more destructive than others. Speed is one of the worst.

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Still would have been a better PSD pick than Skipworth...

with the devlopment of all the players skipworth has had a hand in i think not…tigers cut connors and would have cut martin too if he was a fringe player.

Yep. I suppose it would have been impossible to get Skipworth onto our coaching panel without first gifting him a year of AFL footy.

I was only kidding around Btw. I don’t think we should have got cousins. But please… Skipworth was one of the poorest list management decisions the club has made in recent times.

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Still would have been a better PSD pick than Skipworth...

with the devlopment of all the players skipworth has had a hand in i think not…tigers cut connors and would have cut martin too if he was a fringe player.

Yep. I suppose it would have been impossible to get Skipworth onto our coaching panel without first gifting him a year of AFL footy.

I was only kidding around Btw. I don’t think we should have got cousins. But please… Skipworth was one of the poorest list management decisions the club has made in recent times.

Please. He played 11 games for us and 4 or 5 of them were actually pretty OK (30 and a goal on debut, 19+ touches and a goal or more another couple of times) before he basically broke down with injury. The guy we picked 27 places before him, 15 places before him; and 8, 24 , 38 and 49 picks after him played 1 game between all 7 of them. And TSlatts was the only one who even looked VFL level.

Skipworth wasn’t a great call nor a great player but - if you had a time machine, you’d be changing those other picks well before you thought about him. Sloane (instead of Prismall), Rockliff (instead of Still), Garlett (instead of Carroll), and Breust (instead of German or Bock) would be handy…

Funny you mention Rockliff…

Being hit and miss on kids in a draft is one thing. Picking a 26 (??) year old state level plodder with no upside, onto a list that was 5 years away from challenging, is another.

Where’s Earth when you need him :slight_smile:

P. S. This convo is so 2009… Throwback Thursday indeed.

I think you are underselling Skippy’s cooking.

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Funny you mention Rockliff...

Being hit and miss on kids in a draft is one thing. Picking a 26 (??) year old state level plodder with no upside, onto a list that was 5 years away from challenging, is another.

Where’s Earth when you need him :slight_smile:

P. S. This convo is so 2009… Throwback Thursday indeed.


See to my mind, zero games is a failure, whether they’re old, young, blue or green. Obviously talls are somewhat harder to predict but Carroll? Klemke? German? - where was the upside there?

A semi failure (which is what I’d qualify Skippy as, at effectively pick 90 or 100) is a semi failure.

And after Zaha, we weren’t so much ‘hit and miss’ as ‘miss and miss then Skippy then miss and miss and miss and miss…’

Anyway, back to Cuz…

Hey, I’ve never once talked up the Rookie selections of that year…

Ironically, if we’d waited 12 months when the rules changed, Skipworth could have been a mature age rookie, which would have been a more appropriate spot for him. Ol’ Knighta was ahead of his time.

But Yep… Sorry for the thread derail.

Ice is bad. So is mental illness. Ben has demons with both.

I don’t really see the big difference with a PSD pick compared to an early rookie pick either. 10 or so picks lower down the order, who cares? I’d rather an 11 game PSD pick than a 0 game rookie.

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I don't really see the big difference with a PSD pick compared to an early rookie pick either. 10 or so picks lower down the order, who cares? I'd rather an 11 game PSD pick than a 0 game rookie.

Fair enough. I wouldn’t have rookied him either, was ‘just sayin.’

I do think you should be more frugal with your main list spots than your rookie list spots. I don’t think they are equal.

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I don't really see the big difference with a PSD pick compared to an early rookie pick either. 10 or so picks lower down the order, who cares? I'd rather an 11 game PSD pick than a 0 game rookie.

Fair enough. I wouldn’t have rookied him either, was ‘just sayin.’

I do think you should be more frugal with your main list spots than your rookie list spots. I don’t think they are equal.

Yeah, but only marginally. If you look at it from what it costs to add to your list, really not much behind.

Poor dude is so messed up :frowning:

Ben Cousins arrest: Former Eagle star in police custody

BREAKING: Fallen West Coast Eagles star Ben Cousins has been arrested and is in police custody after an incident in Perth’s south-eastern suburbs.

Police were reportedly responding to reports that Cousins was seen driving erractically in Shreeve Road, in Canning Vale at about 11am after a report of a vehicle driving “erratically”.

They arrested the 36-year-old and have taken him to hospital for an assessment.

Channel Seven reporter Geof Parry told 6PR that there was a large police presence and that Cousins “had done a runner’’ before he was caught.

It is the third time in two weeks that Cousins has come to the attention of WA police, following his arrest after a bizarre “low speed chase’’ between Bicton and Mosman Park two weeks ago and an even more bizarre incident where he was taken into custody after being caught scaling two fences at Swanbourne Barracks, home of the crack SAS regiment, on Saturday March 14.

On that occasion he was taken into custody for a mental health assessment and discharged himself from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital about 48 hours later.

Cousins, a former captain of the West Coast Eagles and 2006 Premiership player, is one of the club’s most decorated players, having won the 2005 Brownlow Medal.

He was stripped of the captaincy in 2007 after doing a runner from a booze bus and leavingt his girlfrend in his car on Canning Highway.

Cousins was then banned from the AFL for a year for bringing the game into disrepute before resuming his career with Richmond, where he ended his AFL playing days.

More to come

How is this bloke not in a mental institution?

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How is this bloke not in a mental institution?

Umm … because he has an addiction problem …

Feel for him and his family.

One of the worst things that could possibly happen to a family.

I hope he gets treatment and gets back on the right path but it is a very long road to recovery.