- Ben Cousins will be part of Channel 7’s AFL commentary team in WA
- Will provide analysis for home games featuring Eagles and Dockers
Footy fans are furious after fallen star Ben Cousins landed a coveted job with Channel Seven in Perth ahead of the 2025 AFL season.
It comes as Cousins, 46, continues to rebuild his life following a drug addiction which ruined his sporting career and also saw the decorated midfielder jailed on multiple occasions for drug offences, stalking and breaching a violence restraining order taken out by a former partner.
Cousins will join AFLW great Daisy Pearce, his former West Coast teammate Mark LeCras and ex-Fremantle skipper Shaun McManus on the broadcaster’s calls of home games this season involving both WA clubs.
The premiership winner in 2006 snared a full-time position on Perth radio station Mix94.5 last month, following on from his role on Seven’s Dancing With The Stars last year.
That came after he made his debut as a Seven News sports presenter in Perth in June 2023, where he impressed the station’s bosses.
But it seems plenty are not impressed at Cousins’ redemption story, pointing to his questionable past, which includes domestic violence, drug and stalking offences.
Some footy fans are furious after Ben Cousins (pictured, left) landed a coveted job with Channel Seven in Perth ahead of the 2025 AFL season
Cousins won a premiership in 2006 (pictured) – but then a drug addiction ruined his sporting career and also saw the champion West Coast Eagles midfielder repeatedly jailed
Cousins will join AFLW great Daisy Pearce (pictured), his former West Coast teammate Mark LeCras and ex-Fremantle skipper Shaun McManus on calls of home games this season involving both WA clubs
‘Once again screaming into the void about Western Australia and Channel 7 giving Ben Cousins air time,’ one posted in response to the the development.
‘I’m all for someone turning their life around, but for a known DV offender….I think it’s for the best they do it out of the public eye.’
A second said: ‘If you are convicted of stalking, I don’t want you beaming at me talking about errant handpasses.’
A third weighed in with: ‘I’ve been on this case for a while. And he’s also lousy at his job.’
Cousins played 238 games and booted 205 goals for West Coast between 1996 and 2007, and also won the Brownlow Medal in 2005.
The one-time Eagles captain was suspended by the club in March 2007 – just six months after the Grand Final triumph against Sydney – for alleged substance abuse and sacked six months later after being arrested for drug possession and refusing to submit to a blood test.
He returned to the AFL in 2009 with Richmond, before retiring at the end of the 2010 season.
Cousins was jailed on six separate occasions in 13 years and spent seven months behind bars in 2020, before he finally decided enough was enough.
This enraged footy fan pointed to Ben Cousins’ past, which includes domestic violence offences
Another posted on X ‘if you are convicted of stalking, I don’t want you talking about errant handpasses’
A third labelled Cousins a ‘washed up junkie’ and felt the role should go to someone who ‘deserves it on merit’
One supporter did credit Cousins for turning his life around, pointing out he has ‘worked so hard to beat your addictions’
He now deeply regrets how long it took to get clean.
‘I wish it hadn’t had to have taken this long, and had to run its course the way it did,’ he revealed to The Front Bar in April last year.
‘But yeah, it’s nice to be working and busy, have some real ambition back, and, you know, just connected back in with friends, family, and even on a community level, you know.
‘Life’s never been better, to be honest.’
