Ben Cousins has revealed that his time filming Dancing With The Stars has reignited his passion for sport.
The 45-year-old AFL legend says he missed the rush of competition and couldn’t get enough.
‘I love the lifestyle of a professional athlete and I missed it,’ he tells the Herald Sun.
‘I really thought that I was going to get six to eight, or 10 weeks through the experience and I’d just be hanging on for dear life waiting for the days to finish. But it was the complete opposite.’
Ben went on to say that he did not want the experience to end.
‘I remember being one week before the show wrapping up and I was starting to get sad, I didn’t want to go home’ he said.
‘For me to think back to that it still shocks me that that could have been the case. I fell in love with it, it was incredible’.
Ben has been rebuilding his life in recent years after a fall from grace.
Ben Cousins has revealed that his time filming Dancing With The Stars has reignited his passion for sport. The 45-year-old AFL legend says he missed the rush of competition and couldn’t get enough. Pictured with dance partner Siobhan Power
The footballer says he was approached multiple times by Channel Seven‘s SAS Australia, which is known for signing up controversial public figures.
Ben has so far refused, however, he has agreed to do Dancing With The Stars this year, explaining that focusing on a new challenge will aid him in rebuilding his life.
The athlete tells the Herald Sun that actually agreed to do the dance competition before, back in 2008, before changing his mind.
‘I’m just in a pretty good space at the moment and am in a position to take on some new challenges and this has come along and probably for the first time in quite a while I am in a position to give it a go’ he said.
‘I love the lifestyle of a professional athlete and I missed it,’ he tells the Herald Sun
‘This worked for where I was at mentally and wanting to throw myself into something.’
When it comes to rebuilding his life, Ben says there is ‘no quick fix’ and he is willing to pay his dues.
‘It is certainly not lost on me, or forgotten, the hard work and commitment that it has taken to get back to where I am’ he explained.
‘It is the long game… You don’t just do something and then all of a sudden it changes overnight.’
Ben won the Brownlow Medal in 2005 and captained the West Coast Eagles from 2001 to 2005, securing the club’s best and fairest awards four out of those season.
He played 238 games and booted 205 goals for the West Coast Eagles, where he won a premiership with the club in 2006.
‘I really thought that I was going to get six to eight, or 10 weeks through the experience and I’d just be hanging on for dear life waiting for the days to finish. But it was the complete opposite’ he added. Pictured in 2005
His dramatic fall from grace was well documented from 2007 as he publicly battled a drug addiction and coped with his failed relationship with Maylea Tinecheff.
He was later sacked and copped a one year ban from the AFL for repeated infringements.
In 2021, Susan Backshell, who has acted as a mentor for Cousins since his last stint on jail, told Daily Mail Australia that he remains solely focused on his kids.
Sitting in a cold, cramped jail cell for the sixth time in 13 years, Cousins decided enough was enough after seven months behind bars in 2020.
He told her he wanted to make amends and clean up his life and Backshell gave him an ultimatum: ‘Give it his all, or forget it entirely’.
Since Cousins was released from custody back in December 2020, Backshell said she’s never once questioned his commitment to sobriety and bettering his community.
Last year, cousins announce hat he will partake in several speaking engagements on his Such Is Life Tour, which kicked off in July.
Promising to tell untold tales from his football career, the tour marked a kind of catharsis for the controversial Brownlow Medallist.
‘I remember being one week before the show wrapping up and I was starting to get sad, I didn’t want to go home’ he said