My point was that when Jack walked into this club we had people rejoicing that a genuine extrovert had come in. Character and leadership was all over him and despite an OK start to his career he has a lot of fans on here because of this arrogance.
It seems to be well known that over the past decade Richmond has lacked that arrogance. We are described as "mentally weak" with "quiet players who argue when things go wrong" by people who play against us (Gary Lyon said this two things recently I believe).
I was saying that if we had someone of Ben's character around the club, then maybe some of these quieter players - who had leadership thrust upon them and obviously couldn't cope - would have been very different. It's amazing what genuine leadership and belief can do.
On an interesting side note, I think there's a small link between our recent mental strength/leadership improvement with someone like Matthew Richardson improving his performances. Now that he has the support around him, with less pressure, his kicking has improved dramatically. Even in front of goal, statistically he has gone from about 59% to at a guess 69% (I last checked mid-year). Joel Bowden as a teenager was hyped up to be a James Hird special talent, but he always hated pre-season training. Maybe with Ben Cousins by his side for 10 years we would have seen Joel become a quality midfielder.
Maybe with Jack Riewoldt by his side we will see Daniel Connors become a quality midfielder.
It's all hypothetical and nobody has to agree. I just wanted to throw out there how important I think it is to have people with traits similar to Ben Cousins around the club. I know you can't pick and choose which traits to live with, but after all is said and done he led his team to a premiership, and there were a lot of weak links in that team.
