Not so tough ... Cousins won't be tested that often. David Geraghty Source: News Limited picture 
Not so tough ... Cousins won't be tested that often. David Geraghty Source: News Limited picture BEN Cousins described his drug-testing conditions as "onerous", but compared to the likes of Craig Mottram and Asafa Powell they're a walk in the park.
In the finding delivered by the AFL Commission on Tuesday, Cousins needs to present for up to three urine tests a week as well as four hair tests a year.
He also has to agree to co-operate fully in all requests for testing.
But the AFL said the tests would be scheduled in advance and conducted while he was at his new club, or during his weekly visits to medicos.
There will be no surprise tests.
For the hair tests, Cousins must also commit to being able to provide hair at least 3cm long, unlike recently when his shaved head and waxed body meant he could not be tested.
The Cousins-specific testing regimen ordered by the AFL deals only with illicit drugs and not performance-enhancing substances.
The AFL's performance-enhancing drug tester, ASADA, would not comment on Cousins.
"We don't make specific comments on specific athletes," an ASADA spokesman said. "We will continue to do tests for performance-enhancing substances for the AFL."
Former Australian long-jump champion David Culbert, now a leading track-and-field commentator, said elite international athletes had their private lives disrupted in a way that footballers, even Cousins if he played next year, didn't when it came to drug testing.
"When you sign up to be an Olympic athlete, what you sign up for is complying with the WADA (World Anti-Doping Authority) code," Culbert said.
"Now I know the AFL has a performance-enhancing drugs code as well as an illicit drugs code, but I also know that, as an Olympic athlete, signing up to the performance-enhancing code means: 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you're available to be tested.
"You are signing up to be harassed by drug testers.
"And just because you're tested today doesn't mean you can't be tested tomorrow.
"And just because you're tested this morning doesn't mean you can't be tested this afternoon."
In August 2007, it was revealed Australia's champion middle-distance athlete Mottram had been drug-tested 46 times in the past 19 months.
Some footballers , including North Melbourne's Brent Harvey, said they had not been tested at all.
"I've had them follow me to the airport because I had to pick someone up from there," Mottram said last year.
On one occasion, before a world cross-country championships, Mottram flew in to London.
"Around 9pm the phone rang," he wrote. "It was the drug testers who said they'd been waiting outside my house for the past three hours.
"When I let them in, the female nurse took some blood and left but I told the male tester he was in for a long night because I wasn't ready to deliver a urine sample.
"I knew if I drank a lot of water very quickly I would be up all night and I desperately needed a good night's sleep.
" 'Right, I'm going to bed', I said to the tester. 'Here's a chair, there is my bedroom, you can watch me sleep'.
"He was a bit shocked but sat there until I woke up at 6am, went to the toilet and produced the sample."
Former world 100m record-holder Powell was tested five times in seven days while in Melbourne for the 2006 Commonwealth Games.
Culbert said: "As an international athlete, wherever you are, anywhere in the world, you have to let people know.
"If you change your plans, you have to let people know.
"It's not just when you go to training. It is when you are on holidays, when you are at home, when you are out for dinner, anytime. That is standard practice for an Olympic athlete."
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