Ben Cousins named to meet Collingwood in NAB Cup
Agence France-Presse | February 22, 2009
BEN Cousins will play his first match for Richmond in Thursday night's AFL pre-season NAB Cup second round clash with Collingwood at Telstra Dome.
Coach Terry Wallace delivered the news to a large crowd of reporters at the Tigers' family day in Melbourne today.
It will be Cousins' first AFL match since being sacked by the West Coast Eagles at the end of 2007 and picked up by Richmond in last December's pre-season draft.
“He's certainly a player that I know we're all keen to see play, he's obviously a champion of the game,” Wallace said.
“I can confirm that he will be playing on Thursday night.”
The addition of the former West Coast skipper and Brownlow Medallist was one of many reasons the coach cited for his belief that the Tigers were ready to break a finals drought stretching from 2001.
“It's taken a little while to develop the side but I genuinely believe that over the last couple of years we've been standing up here hoping to take the next step.
“Now we demand that we take the next step and there's a massive difference between the two,” he told a crowd of about 5,000 fans.
Wallace said the fact that a large core of players now had 50 or more games AFL experience was crucial.
Having the likes of Dean Polo and Andrew Raines back from injury-ruined years and star forward Nathan Brown back to full fitness was also vital.
Those factors, combined with the recruitment of AFL-experienced players Cousins, Tom Hislop and Adam Thomson made for genuine depth.
“If you go and try to pick your own side for round one you're going to leave some very good players out,” Wallace said.
“Once upon a time there was a situation where if we got an injury you'd be bringing in a 17 or 18-year-old young boy, a skinny little kid.
“Now you replace men in the side with men and that makes a massive difference.”
While confessed drug addict Cousins will play his first match since being sacked by the Eagles at the end of 2007, two other Tigers will play their first AFL match of any kind on Thursday night.
They are ruckman-forward Tyrone Vickery, the club's top pick in the most recent national draft and key defender Alex Rance, recruited in the 2007 draft.
Wallace said the club would not be rushing back their 2007 top pick, midfielder Trent Cotchin, who has an Achilles injury.
“He's a player that's going to be a 10-year plus player for the club, where we're at at the moment we don't need to take any risks,” Wallace said.
“We've got a strong enough list to make sure we get him 100 per cent right and I'm sure he'll have a great season when he gets back out there.”
But Wallace said another injured midfielder, Mark Coughlan, who has not played since mid-2006 after back-to-back knee reconstructions, would be back soon after recent minor knee surgery.
“It's nothing bad at all, just a couple of weeks injury, we really want to see him back out there playing his first football,” he said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25090195-5013406,00.html
