Richard Cousins (born 13 July 1962) is a former

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

er who played with Footscray in the Victorian/Australian Football League (VFL/AFL). Cousins started his career at Central District and won their

best and fairest In Australian sport, the best and fairest award recognises the player(s) adjudged to have had the best performance in a game or over a season for a given sporting club or competition. The awards are sometimes dependent on not receiving a suspensi ...

award in 1986. At the end of the year, in the 1986 National Draft, Cousins was selected at pick six by VFL club Footscray and made the move to Victoria. He made 20 appearances in 1987, his first season, mostly as a

centre half-forward In Australian rules football, the centre half-forward is a position on the half-forward line of a football field. The directly opposing player is a centre half-back. Royce Hart of the Richmond Football Club and Wayne Carey of the North Melbour ...

.AFL Tables: Richard Cousins
/ref>''

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

'
"Cousins gets out of his seat and on to the stage"
6 April 1988, p. 32 In 1988, with

Andrew Purser Andrew Douglas Purser (born 31 October 1958) is a former Australian rules footballer who played for the Footscray Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL) and for the East Fremantle Football Club and West Perth Football Club in th ...

no longer at the club having returned to Western Australia, Cousins was Footscray's first ruckman and he had the best season of his career, with eight

Brownlow Medal The Charles Brownlow Trophy, better known as the Brownlow Medal (and informally as "Charlie"), is awarded to the " best and fairest" player in the Australian Football League (AFL) during the home-and-away season, as determined by votes cast by ...

votes. He took 109 marks that year, second only at Footscray to

Peter Foster Peter Clarence Foster (born 1962) is an Australian career criminal who has been imprisoned in Australia, Britain, the United States, and Vanuatu for a variety of offences related to weight loss and other scams as well as absconding from justic ...

. In 1989 he played another 17 games, then didn't feature at all in the 1990 season, which was followed by a three games season in 1991.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cousins, Richard 1962 births Australian rules footballers from South Australia Western Bulldogs players Central District Football Club players Living people