What bull**** howardj - expect better from you to be honest. I don't think he's an evil monster. I think he's a criminal, a dishonest person and an unsuitable person to be put in the position of a role model to young people - within and without the club. As to whether he's fair game, he's brought all of this on himself to date, and its entirely open to him not to seek such a public role if he wants a stable environment to recover in. As for a free kick, what do you want me to do? Track him down in person and tell him? Because that would be a massive intrusion into his privacy. I haven't slandered him or said anything about him as a person other than I don't think he's a good fit for the kind of team we're trying to be, and that I don't want to cheer, or want my children supporting, a team with him in it.
OK, I must have misinterpreted you when you referred to him as a piece of **** and as scum. Drug addiction is a recognised medical illness. If he had a medical illness like cancer, he would get all the sympathy in the world.
I listen to people who know him like Mick Malthouse who wrote earlier this year that Cousins has a heart of gold, and comes from a great family.
I think it would be one of the great sporting stories if this guy made it back. Then he really would be a role model to all young men out there who had fallen off the rails or into the bottomless pit of drug addiction.
No, I don't think you've misinterpreteted me. "A criminal, a dishonest person, and an unsuitable person to be put in the position of a role model", which is what I've said up above, can be used, in my vocabulary, as a synonym to "scum". Saying that he's an 'evil monster' that I'm just enjoying having a free kick at because I'm some kind of coward who enjoys bashing helpless victims is a gross exaggeration of my position which is simply that, from what I have seen and read of him, he's a poor human being.
No doubt there is a medical dimension to drug addiction. But I don't buy the line that people whose choices have led them to the point where they've become medically addicted are purely victims who should automatically bear no responsibility for those choices, or that that medical addiction of itself obviates any guilt associated with any crappy/criminal things they do while addicted. No-one put a gun to Cousins head and made him take ice until he became an addict. That was a series of choices he made, made in the knowledge that it was not only illegal but also self-destructive. My sympathy for him is therefore a fair bit diminished as compared to someone who gets cancer for instance (unless that person was a long-term smoker who got lung cancer - then it would probably be a comparable amount of sympathy).
Anyone who elects to use illegal drugs demonstrates that a) they're fairly stupid to disregard the health consequences and likely addiction, and b) that they are too selfish to forego anti-social behaviour for the sake of the rest of society, in particular that of the people closest to them. That equals a poor person in my eyes.
Now, that's all my personal opinion, and explains why my answer to your question "what if he was one of my mates?" is "it wouldn't matter". I wouldn't be mates with someone who persisted in using illegal drugs. I would make an effort to explain that it was a stupid thing for him to do and then give him an ultimatum - get off the drugs and I'll do what I can to help you and be your friend, or say goodbye because I don't want someone who's doing this in my life. I got to a point where I had a couple of conversations with a now former friend who was becoming an alcoholic, and in the end, he and I stopped being mates.
There's a slight distinction between my personal opinion and the reasons I don't want him at the club. The criteria Jono laid out capture some of those other reasons that are more pragmatic. Having been a weak club on this side of things for quite a while, we've finally made a really positive stand this year, albeit if we had to be dragged there kicking and screaming. Signing on Cousins now would, in my view, make a mockery of that effort. In pragmatic terms it would be a massive distraction and ongoing circus that would severely disrupt the team culture we're trying to build. I think its reasonable as well to have some reservations at this early stage about what kind of example Cousins would be providing to the other players, and that's a problem for me from a moral and pragmatic point of view. But my personal opinion of him as a person is also certainly a factor - and that's something he's going to have to be prepared to deal with from a lot of people. You make your decisions in life and people judge you accordingly.
So he wasn't just after me then? 
