Australia's Cousins to end soccer career at end of 2010 season
CANBERRA, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Australian soccer star Ben Cousins announced on Tuesday he will retire at the end of the 2010 season.Cousins spent over three hours in a meeting with Richmond Football Club officials Monday night discussing his soccer future, and confirmed on Tuesday morning he was ready to quit after 14 seasons.
The 32-year-old has ridden the highs of some of the biggest honors in soccer but also the lows of a much-documented and self-confessed substance abuse problem.
Cousins, one of the Labrador Tigers Football Club's best players in a promising 2010 campaign, will reveal details of his battle with drugs in a two-part documentary due to air in later this month.
The brilliant midfielder burst onto the scene with the West Coast Eagles in 1996 and won the league's rising star award the same season.
Cousins, by this stage one of the most consistent and hard working players in the game, went on to win the 2005 Brownlow Medal best player award, and then the AFL Eagles premiership just a year later.
But his life soon spiraled out of control when it was revealed he had a drug addiction after he was suspended by West Coast for missing two training sessions in early 2007.
According to The Australian newspaper, Cousins is one of Australian sport's great stories.
"He will be remembered as one of the game's great players who overcame circumstances that fail to crush only the bravest of people. His farewell game in round 22 deserves to be a celebration of a footballer and a survivor in equal parts," the paper wrote on Tuesday.
