This is a very interesting article published in todays Age.
Quite a serve given to the Eagles, and their treatment of the media and perceived arrogance.
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/12/16/1166162364371.html
“Covering a two-team town can have its special challenges, as Duffield found out when, after the booze bus incident, he said Cousins should stand down from the captaincy or be relieved of it by the club. Many Eagles fans didn’t like the media taking on a favourite son. Rather than criticise Cousins, some talkback callers blamed the police for setting up the booze bus and the media for its wide coverage.
Everywhere Duffield went – in the street, in taxis – he was deluged with pro-Cousins supporters to the point where he decided to stay out of circulation. “I went out twice in three months,” the reporter says.
In trying to understand Cousins, it’s helpful to consider the culture from which he sprang. He is a product of a club that is rich, powerful, used to success and intimidating. “A lot of the media are frightened to take them on,” Duffield says of the Eagles. “You are not just taking on a football club, you are taking on the big end of town.”
They are bred tough, from the coach down. In March 2006, as a media gathering prepared for a boundary-side conference with Fremantle assistant coach Michael Broadbridge, Worsfold ran 70 metres across Subiaco Oval to call the media “f—ing spastic”. Worsfold was angry that reporters had breached an Eagles club directive that bans them from standing inside the fence, a move instigated after The West Australian reported Worsfold’s dressing down of players after player Beau Waters was hit by a taxi in the early hours of the morning.
On another occasion, Worsfold turned on West Australian reporter Craig O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue approached Worsfold after a press conference, during which the coach had said he had no problem with Waters getting hit by the cab, even though he’d taken a harder line on the issue with the players. O’Donoghue told Worsfold he’d be reporting the coach’s comments to the players.
“Half the team stood there watching,” O’Donoghue remembers. “I got the famous Worsfold stare as he questioned my professionalism, morals and ethics over and over again. He reminded me that he worked for the West Coast Eagles and I worked for a ‘sh#$t newspaper’. It was confronting.”
On a sidenote, there are unonconformed reports that some Eagles players have been out late last night drinking, causing fuss and vandalising some cars and other property.
