SUCH IS LIFE

by Whispering Jack

So the AFL has decided to charge Ben Cousins with bringing the game into disrepute after something like six years in which the kid's been involved with members of the underworld, fled from a breath test, been found blotto in a gutter outside the Casino, admitted to being a drug addict, refused a blood test and sneered and sniggered his way on and off football fields, airport lounges and who knows what else?

Back in July, the AFL allowed Cousins back into the game although there was no satisfactory public statement from Cousins or genuine assurance that he was, in fact, drug-free and over his addiction - the preconditions originally laid out by his club for a return.

The same AFL which once claimed to be Mr. Nice Guy and so very concerned for his health and welfare now charges Cousins at a time when he's been dumped by his club and is about to enter a Los Angeles drug rehabilitation clinic for a second time. That's magnificent timing but where's the charge against his former club which allowed this farce to be played out after being warned by the AFL that any more would see it sanctioned with a possible heavy monetary penalty and a loss of draft picks?

And what responsibility did the AFL itself have in this sordid little episode?

The game's peak administrative body certainly looks foolish now in the way in which it has completely mismanaged the drug issue and particularly by the way it allowed Cousins an easy and premature return to the field of play.

Meanwhile, on the same day and in a different place, Dick Pratt, the President of an AFL club now officially called the "Caaarton Football Caaartel" and his company receive the heaviest fine for corporate price-fixing (many people regard that as a form of "theft"). The AFL won't bat an eyelid about that because, well ... that scam occurred long before Pratt became President but at about the same time that Caaarton was carrying out a different type of scam involving the salary cap.

Of course, Pratt was President of Caaarton when it was the highest bidder for Chris Judd and his golden groin after he defected from the West Coast Eagles amid concerns in some circles that there might be another salary cap scam brewing and he remains in the position today after being exposed as the country's biggest ever corporate lawbreaker. Would the AFL ever bat any eyelid over that?

Or will its head honcho Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli merely sigh softly, turn his head up to the skies and mutter ... "such is life"?