A refreshed Jon Patton reveals why he didn’t play in second half of 2019 and the reasons behind his Hawthorn switch
A smiling Jon Patton says Hawthorn already feels like home as he looks to spearhead the Hawks’ forward line in 2020. Here’s why he left the “first class” GWS Giants and his motivation behind ruling himself out of the later rounds this year.
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You know those people who don’t tell you when you’ve got something in your teeth?
Well, Jonny Patton isn’t one of them.
“You’ve got ink on your face” he tells me — his wide smile giving way to a deep laugh.
“That’s gold, that’s gold.
“I could have left you hanging there.”
Patton knows what it’s like to be “hanging there”.
His mid-interview act of chivalry is a reminder of a fascinating 2019 in which he was declared fit for the second half of the season, but elected not to play.
The Giants’ hulking key forward had overcome a third knee reconstruction in just five years, but chose to stay on the sidelines to protect a trade to Hawthorn as much as his understandably fragile mental state.
We are sitting down with a far different Patton in Hawthorn’s Waverley Park museum.
Two months after he was traded by the Giants for a future fourth-round draft pick, there is a recharged aura about the 198cm 102cm goalkicker.
Big, strong — he looks explosive sitting still. And he’s happy.
“I’m feeling like I’ve just had a whole freshen up,” Patton says.
“It was just what I needed. Walking in here every day, and especially with it being so close to where I grew up, it feels like home.”
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You can hear the comfort in his voice.
Here’s a player who has seen a lot in his 89 AFL games. No. 1 draft pick, four goals in a 2016 preliminary final, 45 majors in 2017 and three reco’s all crammed in to eight rollercoaster years.
Last season’s bold decision to abstain from playing for a side that made it all the way to the Grand Final might have been enough to push some over the edge.
Yet Patton retains perspective.
“It was very tough, but you talk about a first world problem, right?” he says.
“It was difficult there for a while, knowing I could play, but also thinking about the long-term and then also thinking: ‘What if we make the Grand Final’, which we did.
“I had been training really well and before I made the decision to not play the boys were saying: ‘You’ll be back soon won’t ya? You’re killing the track’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’.
“Then I just announced it in front of the boys one day (in June). I just said: ‘I won’t be playing this year. I want to make sure my body is fully right’.
“This is where the Giants are just first-class. Leon (Cameron) and (chief executive) Dave Matthews especially, who I’m really close with. I was speaking to them about it and everyone was really supportive.”
By this point, the wheels were turning on a move to Hawthorn. But in a sign of the esteem Patton was held in the west of Sydney, there was no subterfuge.
All the cards were on the table.
“That’s where I was lucky because a lot of other teams or organisations or in other careers, people probably wouldn’t handle the situation that way,” he says.
“I was in the first draft there back in 2011. I think they also felt for me a bit.
“There was perhaps some ‘Let’s just do the right thing by Jonny’, which I was very thankful for.
“The boys were very supportive. Again, it’s not like I had only been there for a year. It was one of those things where a lot of them could see I needed a change as well.”
If Patton had any regrets over his mid-season decision to sit it out, there were completely quashed only weeks later when close mate Stephen Coniglio suffered a season-ending knee injury against Richmond in Round 17 — a week after he hurt it against the Brisbane Lions.
“Obviously he hurt it the week before and I just said to him ‘Make sure you look after it, you know’ because I knew what could happen,” Patton says.
“Then when he did go down I thought the worst straight away. I knew deep down that was it (for me not to play), especially thinking my best mate had done his ACL — thank God he didn’t.
“That was also one of the things that struck me, to make sure I’m fine long term.”
Yet Patton’s decision would continue to be tested. The Giants lost four of five games between rounds 12-17 and the injuries kept coming.
Key forward colleagues Harry Himmelberg and Jeremy Finlayson both missed Round 21, Finlayson and Jeremy Cameron both missed Round 22. The Giants lost both games.
Then his teammates went and made the Grand Final after finishing sixth.
“I’m thinking, ‘Oh well, the boys might play a couple of finals’, but there was this inner belief at the club that they could go the whole way and you could definitely feel it and see it,” Patton says.
“Then when they did make it, as jealous and hurt as I was to not be there, you couldn’t not feel happy for them and I really wanted them to win it all.
“Some people were like ‘Oh, were you hoping they’d lose so you didn’t miss out on one’. No way in the world.
“I had made my decision so I had to stick by it and not dwell on it or I would have gone nuts.”
In hindsight, maybe life for Patton was like his new club’s slogan – ‘Always Hawthorn’.
He grew up down the road in Rowville, did work experience with the club in his mid-teens and he used to have a kick with mates at Waverley Park after school at nearby Nazareth College.
“I did always say to myself and Paul (manager Paul Connors) that if I were to leave (the Giants), this would probably be the place,” Patton says.
The brown and gold door opened at some point in May when Connors called.
“He was like ‘How you going?’ and I said: ‘I’m feeling great, I’m going to come back and play this year’,” Patton recalls.
“He said ‘That’s great. I might have something. The Hawks are pretty keen on you’.
“I thought after what I’d been through that clubs would maybe be scared off, but he was like, ‘they’re actually very keen’.
“There was a lot of thinking, but ‘Sculls’ (Tom Scully) had come down the year before and the club had taken on a lot of players with long term injuries who had gone on to do good things.”
Asked when and where he met Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson, Patton smiles.
“I’m not sure if I can disclose that,” he says.
“You’re probably a bit in awe when you see ‘Clarko’. It was more of a conversation. They wanted to know how I was feeling about my body and what I wanted to do with my future.
“It was definitely nerve racking, but straight away I could tell they were very serious, which I was struck by.
“That made me feel good again knowing I was wanted.”
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Wanted — and now ready.
Patton has not played at the top level since Round 15, 2018, but that is about to change.
“If there was a game this week I’d play,” he says without hesitating.
“They are being cautious given the time of the year and pulling me in and out of a few drills, but for the most part I’m doing everything.
“There’s been a lot of running. I’m running really well and feeling great with my running.
“Towards the end of my time at the Giants I was in rehab for so long and you get yourself into a pretty negative mindset and you can dwell on it all a bit.
“I just knew I needed a change and coming in here, you feel about five years younger.”