Ben Cousins and Chris Judd have made a rare appearance together with the West Coast Eagles celebrating the club’s 2006 premiership team this week.
Cousins famously missed the team’s 2006 premiership ten-year reunion in 2016 after his life fell apart following the tumultuous end to his football career.
The 47-year-old has continued to turn his life around in recent years while managing a well publicised drug addiction.
His return to be with teammates for such a milestone flips the old script on its head.
His return to be part of the celebrations with former teammates this week is a heartwarming detail of the club’s celebrated 2006 premiership team.
However, there is also a heartbreaking truth behind the club’s reunion following the deaths of premiership players Adam Selwood and Adam Hunter last year.
Hunter was posthumously diagnosed with the deadly brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
He was found unresponsive just after midnight in early February, 2025, with a coronial inquiry later revealing meth-induced heart failure as the cause of his death.
Adam Selwood tragically died at age 41 in Perth on May 17, 2025, just three months after his twin brother, Troy Selwood, passed away.
West Coast premiership winner Beau Waters told The West Australian this week it will be “bittersweet” to spend time with teammates, knowing Hunter and Selwood will not be with them.
“It’s going to be difficult. Above all else, they were great friends, and it’s still binding that we got to play in a premiership together,” Waters said.
“Having the core group back after probably 10 years since we last got together at the 10-year reunion. But you’re going to have two important people missing.
“There’s an element of it that probably brings us closer together and has a heightened level of respect for what we accomplished together, but equally, it’s like doing a puzzle, and when you get down to the last couple of pieces, and they’re missing. It’s certainly going to be bittersweet.”
Players from the team that famously defeated the Swans in the iconic 2006 Grand Final have been busy in Perth this week ahead of their public celebration at Optus Stadium on Saturday.
The Eagles are celebrating the club’s 40-year milestone this week with four premiership cups on display at Crown Perth.
The 2006 team will be given a lap of honour ahead of the Eagles’ clash with Richmond.
Judd and Cousins have been in the thick of the celebrations with the pair making public appearances together, including at a special comedy night in Perth.
Bec Judd has also been among the celebrations.
The 43-year-old on Thursday shared a series of photos from the occasion with Eagles players and their partners.
“Perth hangs with the GOAT team,” she posted.
She also shared an image originally posted by the Eagles which showed her husband holding the premiership cup in front of an army of Eagles fans.
“It’s the sunnies and the hair for me,” she wrote.
“Young, dumb and not realising the gravity of this moment in time. These were the golden years.”
While Judd has made a smooth transition into life after football with previous roles with Triple M and Channel 9’s Footy Show, Cousins is only now on solid ground.
He reached a milestone last year when he started his first full-time job since his football career finished.
Cousins has had multiple roles with Channel 7 in Perth and took up full time job in radio last year.
Cousins patches life back together after sad spiral
Cousins is not the same man he once was.
He spent seven months in jail in 2020 after repeatedly breaching a restraining order and allegedly threatening to kill his former partner and mother of his children, Maylea Tinecheff.
Cousins and Tinecheff were together from 2008 to 2013 and share two children, aged 11 and 13.
Earlier, in 2018, Cousins also served 10 months of a 12-month prison sentence for stalking Tinecheff.
After finishing his career, Cousins’ life spiralled out of control, leading to a public battle with drug addiction.
The 2006 AFL premiership winner resigned his captaincy at West Coast in 2006 after fleeing an RBT before it was revealed he had a substance abuse problem.
Cousins spent time in rehab in the same year before he was arrested for drug possession the following year.
He was delisted and banned from the AFL for 12 months.
In 2009, Cousins did return to the AFL, playing the final two seasons of his career at Richmond.
Cousins played 238 games for West Coast and his final 32 games with Richmond before his career ended in 2010.
But in more recent times, Cousins appeared fit and healthy and has come clean on how difficult his recovery has been.
“It just gets back to being happy and for a long time, I hadn’t been and I had those fleeting moments where I thought I was kidding myself just to try and get by,” he said in 2022.
“It’s been a big struggle but today I sit here and it’s not in any way about the things I’ve given up or had to give up or sacrifice, it’s all about things I can give back.”
