ALASTAIR Lynch says he vividly remembers training alongside Jonathan Brown for the first time and knowing the Brisbane Lions had a special talent.
The Lions had lured Brown – a potential father-son selection – to Brisbane 12 months ahead of the draft to put the 17-year-old through his paces.
Leigh Matthews had asked a then 30-year-old Lynch to test out the young bull.
"I distinctly remember a training session at Coorparoo when Leigh told me to do some one-on-one marking with him and straight away I thought 'Gee, I hope we can get this kid in, he seems to go all right'," Lynch recalled.
"And knowing his background and dad, I thought it'd be great to get him up here.
"He had a strong body for a young kid and knew how to take a contested grab.
"I don't think any of us really appreciated what we'd got until he took the field and then we realised pretty quick."
It was just a few years earlier Brown had entered the Fitzroy dressing rooms at Princes Park with his father Brian, who played 51 games for the Lions, to seek the autograph of his hero Lynch.
The pair would play alongside each other for five seasons, including the 2001-2003 premierships and form a great combination with Lynch the stay-at-home full-forward and Brown the mobile centre half-forward.
While Matthews described Brown's incredible back-with-the-flight mark against Hawthorn in 2002 as the "most amazing thing I've seen in a game of footy", Lynch said his teammate's fearless courage forced him to alter his own game a touch.
"There was two occasions that I remember he was coming back hard (with the flight), and for me and my opponent to jump into him, someone was going to get badly hurt," Lynch said.
"A couple of times my opponent got in front of me and I had to grab him around the waist and give away a free kick because Browny was coming back no matter what and my opponent was going towards him, so it would have been quite ugly.
"You got to sit in row one and watch the way he went about it. It was great to see."
Fellow triple premiership player Simon Black was also full of praise for Brown's courage, and said the 2011 collision with Mitch Clark and Geelong's Harry Taylor will live in his memory.
"That's as big a hit I've seen on a football field," Black said.
"The amount of ground Browny had to make to get back to try and get that mark, he was running at full pace and no regard for what was coming the other way, that was the most courageous, some may call it silly, thing I've seen on a football field."
Aside from the courage, Lynch and Black agree the forgotten element of Brown's game was his incredible running ability.
Lynch said opponents had to decide whether they wanted to match his size and strength or put someone on that could run with him.
"He was 100-plus kilos and to still run with the midfield group in those running sessions was a super effort," Black said.
"He'd always pushed himself to be the best he could."
