ST KILDA'S bid to lure former Eagle Ben Cousins to Moorabbin continued to gather momentum on Thursday with board member Nathan Burke admitting the club was closely monitoring the Brownlow Medallist's efforts to be re-instated as an AFL player.
Burke said football manager Matthew Drain had been the club's main point of contact with Cousins and his management as the Saints attempt to trump front-runners Collingwood for the 30-year-old's signature.
But the Magpies aren't the only hurdle the club must clear with Cousins needing to satisfy AFL medical staff on Monday that he is fit to resume his 238–game career after serving a 12-month ban for bringing the game into disrepute.
"We're obviously across the discussions that are taking place. We know that they've [the AFL] spoken to Ben a number of times, but we do have to wait and find out exactly what the AFL are going to do," Burke told Melbourne radio station SEN on Thursday.
"They haven't made up their minds just yet so that may pre-empt everything that we've got in place.
"We've got a board meeting next Thursday night and I daresay it may come up as a topic there. The thing that is in our favour, obviously, is that the pre-season draft doesn't take place until December this year, so there's a lot of water to go under the bridge between now and then - a lot of checks, a lot of [rubber] stamping by the AFL.
"We'll just go through that process and see what comes out at the end of it, but I'm sure it will be discussed next Thursday night."
Burke admitted further complications could arise if the AFL were to impose any special conditions on Cousins' re-instatement, but also argued there were risks inherent in picking up any mature-age player under the league's three-strike illicit drug policy.
"Ben's just one of the slight anomolies in that system," he said.
"The other anomaly is that if we actually trade for a player and they come across, we don't actually know that they've got potentially two strikes until they get here and one more strike and that player is out and we lose our investment entirely.
"You can understand that that's a frustration for the clubs. The AFL says that for confidentiality reasons we can't go broadcasting who has got two strikes because that will prevent people from being drafted and there's a chance it will leak out.
"We do have to take that into account because obviously if you do get a player like Ben and the AFL say 'well he's got his [two] strikes, one more and he's out' what does that do with our investment in him as a player?
"That's where the homework and the due diligence around his mental state and his state of health at the time will come into play. Obviously we have to do an enormous amount of checks to make sure that we were confident that the third strike won't come into play."
