Cousins the myth and Cousins stripped down to essentials were both on show yesterday, writes Greg Baum.

TWO Ben Cousinses were apparent at Punt Road yesterday.

One was the fallen idol whose absence appears to have made all hearts inordinately fonder, the prodigal son who to judge from blogs, websites and talkback radio enjoys at least as much favour now as in his West Coast heyday, and who seems already to have gained Richmond an unprecedented fund of goodwill merely for taking him on.

This Cousins is something of a modern myth, arriving at Tigerland yesterday in a blaze of backlit glory, encircled by camera crews — including one of his own — and security guards, one of whom took his own photographs of the media taking photographs of Cousins.

The whole surreal scenario was more befitting a rock star than a footballer, except rock stars are tolerated in their drug abuse and sometimes celebrated for it, and Cousins was here to seek absolution for his.

The media have been players in the Cousins saga like never before. They have saturated themselves in him and made it so that by yesterday it was impermissible in this town not to have an opinion about him; new Lord Mayor Robert Doyle volunteered one on radio, unsolicited.

Media made Cousins a cause celebre, talkback radio rallying and impassioning fans who besieged the club on Monday to demand that it draft him, a demonstration of people power that the club admits weighed heavily on its backroom deliberations.

About 2000 fans were back yesterday morning at a dampened Punt Road to welcome Cousins to their club. Some, a gaggle, waited three hours after training for a further adoring glimpse.

Fans, of course, have a luxury that officials do not: to judge only on appearances and to close their minds to all sensitivities except the imperative of the next win. At Richmond, there have been too few of them for too long. And the Tigers love their saviours, the more so if they are flawed.

The other Cousins was the footballer on the ground, distinctively his pigeon-chested self even in Greg Tivendale's vacated No. .32 guernsey, fit-looking, but finer in the arms and legs than when he last played.

At first he performed regulation running and kicking drills with the squad, responding to instantly familiar calls of "Cuz" from new teammates, some whose names he could not have known. Then he changed into running shoes for a series of 200-metre sprints alongside resident legend Matthew Richardson, run at an earnest pace and causing both to gasp and wince.

Notably, Cousins stretched his hamstrings after every sprint and every kick, did not kick through the ball at any stage and did not bend for balls kicked at his feet; this being Richmond and December, they were plentiful. At length, Cousins and Richardson called it a day; it had lasted three-quarters of an hour.

Cousins' precautions were sensible, but they were also a reminder that he is 30, has barely played for two years and limped out of his last game with a torn hamstring, memories that deterred some clubs from drafting him as much as any underworld connections and history of drug addiction.

This, in shorts and training guernsey, was Cousins stripped down to the essentials — a footballer again, to live or die on his footballing wits and exploits. Now the reconciliation begins, between Cousins and the game, and between the two Cousinses. Yesterday's news conference was a start.

The setting was its own story: in the Richmond social club, but in front of a sponsors' backdrop that obscured black-and-white photographs of Tom Hafey, Kevin Bartlett, Michael Roach and David Cloke.

It also hid Cousins' manager Ricky Nixon, whose position symbolised the flurry of behind-the-scenes activity that has characterised the past week, and who also betrayed a year's worth of fraying when he emerged momentarily to upbraid a television reporter for his line of questioning, calling him a "knob".

Cousins did not appear to need the protection. Without blinking, scarcely hesitating, he spoke of the "long and humbling" year of his suspension, of his quest — still incomplete — to return to a healthy and drug-free lifestyle, of how he once resented his role as a model, but how now it "sits better with me", and might even allow him to do good.

He said he had learned much about himself, categorically the hard way. He spoke of how he had learned to deal evenly with the attention, but regretted that it had been "painful and stressful" for family and friends.

He said he had deserved his suspension, but now deserved his second chance. He said he had begun to despair of getting one, that he would have to earn his place in the Richmond team, that he would have to adapt to a game that had changed since he last appeared, but that he was confident of returning to "somewhere near" his best.

It was a vintage Cousins display: poised, self-confident, without artifice, disarming in its way, delivered as he once delivered on the field and hopes and intends to again, from the heart.

But as the microphones and lights were turned off and he made for the exit, he was still rubbing his hamstrings.