{"id":909,"date":"2010-02-18T17:45:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T07:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sandralee.com.au\/?p=909"},"modified":"2010-02-18T17:45:04","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T07:45:04","slug":"footballer-ben-cousins-splits-with-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/2010\/02\/footballer-ben-cousins-splits-with-agent\/","title":{"rendered":"Footballer Ben Cousins splits with agent"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_910\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Ben-Cousins.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-910\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-910\" title=\"Ben Cousins\" src=\"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Ben-Cousins-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Ben Cousins on a recent cover of leading men's magazine GQ\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Ben-Cousins-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Ben-Cousins.jpg 366w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-910\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Cousins on a recent cover of leading men&#39;s magazine GQ<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Controversial Australian Rules Footballer <strong>Ben Cousins<\/strong> and his long-time manager <strong>Ricky Nixon<\/strong> have parted company.<\/p>\n<p>Nixon, who has looked after various business affairs and sponsorship deals for Cousins for more than a decade, told me today that he and the champion Richmond midfielder severed their professional relationship two weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p>He refused to comment on the reasons behind the split and said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.richmondfc.com.au\/players\/playerprofile\/bencousins\/tabid\/8473\/playerid\/19974\/category\/senior\/season\/2009\/selected\/bio\/default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Cousins<\/a> was now being represented by the <strong>Richmond Football Club<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>When asked why, Nixon replied: &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to make a public comment about it&#8221;.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Nixon, who runs the <strong>Flying Start<\/strong> sports management company, stood beside Cousins when he was booted from the West Coast Eagles for drug abuse and deregistered from the AFL for &#8220;bringing the game into disrepute&#8221;. He was instrumental in getting the 31-year-old <strong>Brownlow <\/strong>medallist back into the game for the 2009 season at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.richmondfc.com.au\/\" target=\"_blank\">Richmond<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As reported <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adelaidenow.com.au\/sport\/afl\/ricky-nixon-ben-cousins-cut-ties\/story-e6freck3-1225830728943\" target=\"_blank\">elsewhere<\/a>, it is believed Cousins&#8217;s upcoming documentary and book deal are part of the reasons for the split.<\/p>\n<p>Cousins has had several problems during his long and successful career. He was busted for fleeing a booze bus in 2006, and suspended from the Eagles in mid-2007 while he\u00a0underwent rehab for drug abuse the United States, before being brought back into the fold until his comeback was cut short by injury.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_911\" style=\"width: 97px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Cousins-and-cops.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-911\" class=\"size-full wp-image-911\" title=\"Cousins and cops\" src=\"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/Cousins-and-cops.jpg\" alt=\"Ben Cousins with police after his arrest\" width=\"87\" height=\"126\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-911\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Cousins with police after his arrest<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Finally, though, he was sacked from the club after being arrested, shirtless with his &#8220;such is life&#8221; tattoo fully exposed, for drug possession at the end of 2007. The charge was later dropped but he was banished from the league for a year.<\/p>\n<p>He is set to return to the field when the season kicks off in March.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Controversial Australian Rules Footballer Ben Cousins and his long-time manager Ricky Nixon have parted company. Nixon, who has looked after various business affairs and sponsorship deals for Cousins for more than a decade, told me today that he and the champion Richmond midfielder severed their professional relationship two weeks ago. He refused to comment on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,11,3,7,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebrity","category-crime","category-pop-culture","category-society","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":916,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions\/916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandralee.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}