KEY POINTS:
Halfback Jimmy Cowan must abstain from alcohol if he is to remain an All Black.
The 26-year-old has been fined $3000 by his New Zealand Rugby Union employers, ordered to seek alcohol counselling after three charges were laid against him in recent weeks and warned any further breaches
will mean an end to his All Black career.
Cowan will be on the bench when the All Blacks play the Springboks in Wellington on Saturday but has been warned he has no further chances after he appeared at a New Zealand Rugby Union hearing yesterday.
"We have made it a condition of his employment that he stop drinking altogether. This is his last chance," All Black manager Darren Shand said.
Cowan has been charged three times with disorderly behaviour between April and June, with the latest charge laid yesterday by Dunedin police.
The All Black halfback will be in court today in Wellington in connection with that charge.
"He has had periods when he has not drunk because he thought he could not deal with it but I don't think he has generally come to the realisation until now," Shand said.
"He was a young man who thought he was bombproof but it has finally caught up with him and he was always going to have to come to that realisation himself.
"You can put as much resource and support around people as you can but at the end of the day there has got to be some self-accountability. If he breaks it again [the alcohol ban] he is gone."
Cowan has three alcohol-related charges pending against him and Shand said while his organisation had dealt with Cowan, they did not want to prejudice his rights for his court cases.
Cowan was involved in his latest incident in Invercargill early on Sunday morning and after being held at the police station was able to assemble later that day with the All Blacks in Wellington.
"We have made it very clear this is his last chance," Shand said. "We take the matter very seriously and considered other penalties. However in light of Jimmy's willingness to acknowledge his problem and seek help for it, we decided that what was most important was that we address the problem openly and deal with it rather than pushing it to one side."
Cowan's compliance with all the conditions of the agreement reached yesterday between him and the NZRU will be monitored by his employers with regular reviews and testing.
The manager said the senior All Blacks had a "gutsful" of the halfback's behaviour and serial offending while the NZRU was mindful of the damage of his actions to the sport.
Cowan attended a NZRU hearing yesterday with his manager Tom Downey in which Shand and high performance manager Neil Sorenson heard submissions for several hours.
" ... We have got to be proactive when these sort of things happen, we can't just sit and wait, particularly when Jimmy has been a recidivist offender," Shand added.
The NZRU had reserved the right to any further action when they saw the outcome of Cowan's multiple court appearances.