The Wild Wild West Arrogance

February 15, 2008 | Filed Under AFL News

Senior Player Arrogance, Underworld links, Drug and Alcohol abuse, bad language in public places. That sums up the West Coast Eagles.

The Internal Inquiry into the West Coast Eagles off field behaviour has been made public. After reading the report it certainly highlighted to me the arrogance that is widely associated with the West Coast Eagles Football Club. The Eagles are well known for their reputation off the field both here and overseas and in particular Ben Cousins, as you can read here and also here. The Eagles now have a very bad reputation and I can’t see them breaking that any time soon.

The senior leadership group which would have included Ben Cousins, Michael Gardiner, Chad Fletcher, and Daniel Kerr had a lot of influence over the rest of the playing group at the time and should have pulled into line much sooner than they were. 35 separate incidents (involving 13 players) which were highlighted as matters of poor off-field behaviour. Including links between players and underworld figures, assaults, drug and alcohol abuse and inappropriate language in public. It also revealed poor behaviour by two Eagles players during drug tests last year and poor behaviour by some players during AFL education sessions.Yet the Eagles board and coaching staff seemed to have tried to sweep these under the carpet to some extent. They were performing well on the field and I don’t think they wanted to mess with that. As we have seen recently if clubs fail to act in appropriate manner and let these players basically get a way with it then things can get ugly just ask North Melbourne and Wayne Carey who was given basically a free reign at the time.

I wonder what the team would be like now if the Eagles Board and Coaches had of acted differently? Would Cousins and Gardiner still be at the club? They probably would. I am not saying that it would have stopped what has transpired over the last 12 months for the Eagles but it sure as hell would have gone along way to doing so.

Key Stakeholders in the club, when interviewed, suggested the Club should have investigated in more detail rumours and allegations dating as far back as 2002.

The time has now come for the Eagles top dogs to take more responsibility and come down hard on anyone not toeing the line. The new leadership group must have a big impact on the group if the culture is to be changed. It still amazes me that some players don’t take more pride in the position they are in, there are many others that would give left knacker to be in their position.

There were 18 recommendations for the future one of which was to investigate the use of personal security/minders for the player group (or at
risk players) when they are at a public events that are considered to include a high risk of player harassment.

You can read or download the full Cowan / Scudamore Report here.