Brisbane champion Jonathan Brown has been inducted into the Australian football Hall of Fame
Jonathan Brown was a towering presence on the footy field for 14 years. After he joined the Hall of Fame a former teammate has shared his favourite Brown story about a night game against Collingwood at the Gabba that still gives his goosebumps.
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Jonathan Brown and female marathon runners.
You couldn't find more opposite ends of the sporting spectrum.
But when the comparison was made by his doctor, the Brisbane Lions powerhouse knew he was in trouble.
In his own words Brown had been in a “bit of a purple patch” in the first half of the 2006 season. And in typical fashion, that's an understatement.
From Round 7-10, he'd averaged 11 marks, 20 disposals and 6.5 goals including a bag of eight and two consecutive hauls of seven goals.
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Later in the year Brown's dominance would be revealed on Brownlow Medal night with the Lions centre half-forward polling 13 votes from the opening 10 games of the season to be leading the count early.
But an awkward landing early in the Round 10 game against Collingwood at the MCG had done what opposition defenders had been unable to do all year; stopped him in his tracks.
For several days afterwards the Lions weren't sure what had happened to their superstar which was why Brown ended up in the Melbourne office of leading orthopaedic surgeon David Young.
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“I'd landed on my tailbone and while I played out the game I was bloody crook afterwards,” Brown explains.
“We couldn't work out what was wrong so Gubby Allan (Lions football boss) took me to see David Young and he goes: ‘We don't have a lot of precedents to work on here but what we do know is this injury is very common among female marathon runners’.
“Well, that didn't give me a lot of confidence as I was a 105 kilo AFL footballer. It turns out I'd fractured my sacrum, it was probably a stress injury as well.
“It was a bit of a shame because I was up and about then but it was probably the catalyst to change the way I trained and just get myself right.
“I don't think I missed a game for the next three years after that. I got a bit smarter and realised the season was a marathon not a sprint and I was able to peel off three best-and-fairests after that.”
Brown’s stellar career can be split into three distinct phases with 2006 the beginning of the second phase which saw the kid from Warrnambool become the best player in the competition.
Former teammate Brent Staker recounted his favourite Brown story on Facebook on Tuesday.
“We were playing Collingwood in 2010 at the Gabba. I was two lockers from Browny getting ready for the game,” he wrote.
“I remember this night looking over whist he was lacing up his boots (he would always lace up his brand new adidas boots before a game) having a look in his eye. A look of focus and sheer determination. The game was still over an hour away.
“We all hated Collingwood (sorry, Pies fans) but all of a sudden it made sense. As we got to the bottom of the race just before we ran out he stopped us. Browny looking back at us all for one final captain’s speech, he said: “Listen up.” He went on to speak a few words about going into battle (and his detest for the Pies) and then finished with words which I’ll never forget.
“He said, ‘Boys, get ready because we are about to go to war’. Everyone’s hairs on the back of their neck stood up, it was like a flicked switch with everyone all of a sudden walking a foot taller. Then the big number #16 leads us up the race into the roaring Gabba. It’s a JB moment I’ll never forget.”
After being taken by the Lions as a father-son selection in the 1999 draft - his father Brian played 50 games for Fitztroy in the late 1970s - Brown walked into a team that was being shaped into a super power by new coach Leigh Matthews.
The 18-year-old played 13 games in his first season and then every game the following year with his 38th career game being Brisbane's Grand Final victory over Essendon.
By the time Brown reached 100 games he'd already played in four grand finals, winning three of them — 2001, 2002 and 2003 — and was a key figure in one of the best teams of all-time.
His memories are very different for each premiership success.
The first was genuine ecstasy — “You’re a 19-year-old and you’re thinking, ‘Gee. how good is life?’,” — while 2002 came with an overwhelming sense of relief as the burden of favouritism had weighed heavily on the Lions.
And 2003 was a story of overcoming great adversity given the team's injuries, notably Nigel Lappin famously playing with broken ribs and a punctured lung.
But the loss to Port Adelaide in 2004 still leaves him with a sense of regret.
After a brilliant first final at the Gabba against St Kilda the Lions were bizarrely — and clearly unfairly — required to play their preliminary final in Melbourne against Geelong.
“The rules were obviously unfair but it was more the way September just turned on its head,” Brown says.
“We went from a really healthy team at the top of our game at quarter-rime that night against the Cats to all of a sudden thinking, s--- this is going to be a big mountain to climb, and it turned out to be one too many mountains.”
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Brown injured his knee midway through the first quarter and had plenty of mates hobbling as well. While they held on to beat Geelong by nine points, it was a different story the following week as Port Adelaide blew the Grand Final apart in the second half, winning by 40 points.
“From a personal point of view I often look back and think, ‘What if? What if?’ I’d started to really get that belief that you could really dominate a game of football if I got going. So you look back on it and it wasn’t my fault, it was just the way the cookie crumbled but that is probably my biggest what-if.”
Collingwood came knocking in 2008 with a massive multimillion-dollar offer after Brown had produced a vintage 2007 which included his first Brisbane best and fairest, All-Australian selection and the Coleman Medal.
“They went close,” he says. “I can't put a finger on why (I stayed), there were a number of reasons but I guess at the end of the day the reasons just weren’t compelling enough to tip me over the line.
“I had that real genuine affection for the club, I was captain at the time and was just about to marry my wife Kylie and she’s a Queenslander.
“No doubt you look back and go, ‘Gee, I would have loved to have played in more success, more finals’, which Collingwood went on to do that ... but I think ultimately to be able to look back and be very proud to have played 15 years at the one club.
“I think when Leigh (Matthews) used to say it to us that his proudest achievement as a player was to play his career at the one club, you think he's saying that because he’s just trying to get us to stay.
“But I get it now, you look back on those words and I can certainly relate to them.”
Brown doesn't have any regrets about the third phase of his career, which was plagued by serious injuries and is happy he changed his mind about retiring in 2012.
“After I had the horrible facial head injuries in 2011, I played most of the year in 2012 but I was so buggered. 2011 had taken such an emotional and physical toll on me and I was going to hang them up.
“But I'm actually glad I went on even though 2013 and 2014 weren't that productive. I'm just glad I pushed on and just wrung the towel dry.
“If I had gone and retired early, I definitely would have regretted it because we always miss playing footy, you never get that out of your system so at least I knew I had nothing left.”
Ironically one of Brown's greatest achievements since retirement is something David Young would find amusing ... running the New York Marathon.
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