Tom Jonas breaks down his first year as Port Adelaide captain alongside Ollie Wines on The Lowdown Podcast
Power co-captain Tom Jonas discusses his first year in the hot-seat at Alberton, his biggest frustration, proudest moment and more on The Lowdown Podcast this week.
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Tom Jonas says his biggest frustration in his first year as co-captain with Ollie Wines was trying to find an answer to Port Adelaide’s inconsistency but he is proud of the way the group remained galvanised all season.
The Power missed the finals by one game after going win/loss for nine consecutive weeks mid-year and finished 10th with an 11-11 record.
Speaking on The Advertiser’s The Lowdown Podcast, Jonas described his own season as “solid” after missing four weeks with a calf-injury and having two games where he was disappointed with his performance.
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“Besides that I just played the trademark footy that led me to where I was going into the start of the year,” he said.
“Getting my job done and showing strong leadership on field and off-field. The proudest part for me has been the work I’ve put in off-field in the connection space and developing that with the boys.
“It’s just making the calls, spending time catching up, sending messages, thinking about others.
“I really enjoyed working with Ollie this year and leading this great club and hopefully I’m fortunate enough to do it for a few more years.”
Asked whether he thought he’d done a good job, Jonas said only his teammates could answer that.
“They’re probably the better ones to ask than me, they might have another view, but we’ve had 22 new blokes in the last two years in terms of list turnover so it’s really important we spent time in that area (relationship building),” Jonas said.
“I think having two captains has been great for that as well, Ollie is a bit younger and I think we’ve covered the group relatively well.
“It’s been a privilege, a little bit of what I expected, highs and lows. At the start of the year winning the first two games after such a massive build up, it went on a rollercoaster after that and it was tough, there is external and internal scrutiny and you can question yourself but you’ve got to stick true to what got you in that position.”
He said he felt most pressure when Port couldn’t win two games in a row.
“When we were going win/loss for maybe the sixth or seventh week, everyone was asking for answers and I couldn’t really put my finger on it as hard as we were trying,” he said.
“The results didn’t change and you feel like you owe more to the supporters but you can’t give it, all you can do is go out on game day and try your hardest.”