It has included a premiership, a Brownlow Medal, West Coast club captaincy, four West Coast club champion awards, six All-Australian selections, the 1996 NAB AFL Rising Star Award, the 2005 AFLPA MVP award and an international rules appearance.
But the good has been weighed down with plenty of bad.
At West Coast he was never far from controversy. Allegations, primarily about his drug-taking, dogged him throughout his time at the club, eventually costing him both his place at West Coast and a year of his playing career.
However, there is no doubt he was a great of his generation. Cousins started as a small forward - he has 218 goals to his name.
He moved into the midfield and, with Chris Judd, helped redefine the importance of the hard-running, goal-scoring midfielder.
His Brownlow came in 2005 - the year the Eagles reached the grand final and lost, heartbreakingly, by a point to the Sydney Swans.
When redemption came the following season, Cousins was first after Judd onto the dais to hoist the premiership cup.
West Coast stood by him through his early troubles, including being questioned by police about his knowledge of a Perth nightclub shooting and stabbing. The club took action in early 2006 after he abandoned his car on a major highway to run from a booze bus. The Eagles stripped him of the captaincy, which cost him the opportunity to be a premiership captain.
In early 2007, the club suspended him indefinitely after he failed to attend several training sessions, and he went overseas to attend a drug rehabilitation clinic, before returning to play seven late-season games for the club.
But his arrest in October 2007 on charges of possessing a prohibited drug - later dropped due to incorrect police procedures - was the last straw for West Coast, which sacked him the following day.
The AFL then deregistered him for a year for bringing the game into disrepute, forcing him to sit out the 2008 season.
The AFL renewed his registration late in 2008, and Cousins became the last senior-list selected player when he was taken by the Tigers with pick six, the final choice in the 2009 NAB AFL Pre-Season Draft.
The 32-year-old has, for the most part, rewarded Richmond's faith. He has been in good form over the past month, and bravely played on despite receiving a badly corked thigh in the weekend’s loss to Carlton.
Cousins has several times thanked the Tigers for giving him the opportunity to again play football at the top level. That opportunity allowed him 30 more senior games - with a probable two still to come - and the chance to depart the sport as a player, rather than an outcast.
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
