No fairytale ending as the Cousins show winds upGreg Baum
August 30, 2010BEN Cousins' farewell to football was becoming of him in that everything about it was outsized.
The crowd was 10,000 more than could have been expected for a match of such humble billing; the Records sold out before the start.
Richmond's entry was delayed while the ground announcer recited Cousins' accomplishments, usual for a tennis player in a major final, but unprecedented in this most adamantly egalitarian of games.
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Port Adelaide's 10-goal second quarter was off the scale, but Richmond's comeback seemingly to snatch the lead in the last quarter was even farther fetched. The denouement was from another realm, too, although not from a fairytale.
Only Cousins' part in it was proportionate. He fretted that he might embarrass himself by breaking down in the warm-up, began all four quarters on bench, stayed away from the bottom of packs, reached constantly for hamstrings that sang like telephone wires in their tightness, and made his reluctance to kick obvious.
Mostly, he was an incidental in the unfolding of the game, as he never would have been his heyday. ''I got through but I was just going, wasn't I?'' he said. ''The boys carried me a bit.'' The game cut him down to size.
But when it was done, the lens was inverted again. He did a lap of honour, although cutting corners as he never did in any other endeavour, for better or worse.
He was feted as unconditionally as any 32-game player in history; later, he thanked Richmond people for their ''non-judgemental'' embrace. Chris Newman and Trent Cotchin chaired him off through a guard of Richmond and Port players.
If the other Tigers sometimes have felt like props in the Ben Cousins show, they have not complained. As for the fans, their longing for a hero never slackens.
In the rooms, the enlarging of the legend went on. There to greet Cousins was his long-suffering father, Bryan, others of his family, his drug counsellor and some friends from his West Coast days.
''It took every one of them to get me back to where I am,'' Cousins said.
Here, seemingly, was most of the cast of the so-called documentary that aired over two nights last week in an atmosphere almost of hysteria.
Channel Seven laboured its programming coup far past the point where it could credibly claim that it bought the rights as a service on drug education. But concerning Cousins, all sense of proportion was lost long ago.
An hour after the game, Cousins was still in his full match kit, reflexively stretching his twangy hamstring - dressed in a huge ice pack - still a footballer, just.
He was, he said, proud and excited, but drained. He was also, he said, a little over the Ben Cousins story himself. ''My front-page strike-rate was Don Bradman-like,'' he said.
Everything about Cousins' career has been exaggerated by the circumstances of its ending, but in due course, history will establish a place for him. It will not be the one that he might have envisaged once, but it will be worthy, and salutary, too. He will be seen in his proper size.
But first, there is ''Mad Monday''.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/no-fairytale-ending-as-the-cousins-show-winds-up-20100829-13xl8.html
