The Herald Sun's Mark Robinson is reporting that Tigers star Dustin Martin has been ignoring former teammate Ben Cousins' phone calls, one of which came at 3am.
Robinson states that in the lead up to Cousins being arrested and put in jail for drug possession earlier this year, he reached out to several former teammates in an attempt to reclaim memorabilia to presumably sell for drugs.
One of those people was Martin, who Cousins reportedly gave his final playing jumper to in 2010 as a memento.
It is understood that the troubled ex-Tiger tried to retrieve his jumper from Martin and wanted other memorabilia from the 2017 Brownlow Medallist.
And as Martin remains focused on the Tigers' premiership defence, he was forced to block Cousins' number.
Martin's manager Ralph Carr was unaware of the situation, but backed the 27-year old to stay focused on Richmond's pursuit of going back-to-back.
“Dustin is beautiful human being,” Carr told The Herald Sun.
“He is so driven to have success for Richmond — I’d have coffee with him last year and I’d ask him about all the Brownlow Medal talk and he’d say, ‘Forget about that, Ralph, it’s more about us winning a flag’.
“He was never concerned about the personal accolades — I’ve never heard him talk about himself anyway.
“He’s humble … I saw him yesterday and he looks super fit. I asked him how he was feeling and he said, ‘Fantastic, I’m ready to go’.
“I didn’t know that, but knowing Dusty as well as I do, the moment someone would say that to him, he’d just walk away, he’s not interested in the slightest with that sort of rubbish.
“It’s a shame because like most kids at his age back then, he idolised Cousins.”
