What a champion he has been! Not just a Bulldogs' champion, where he is a living legend of the club who will be remembered on the same level as EJ Whitten, but across the whole of the AFL.
By any measure, he's one of the greats of the league, and not many players have, over the extraordinary length of his career, gained the universal respect from everyone in the industry that Brad has.
One of the most remarkable things about Jonno is that he was a multiple All-Australian midfielder capable of matching it with anyone in the competition, but then, when the club needed him to play as a forward, he's done that brilliantly as well. Ignoring this year, there are only two years where he has kicked under 40 goals in a season since 2001, and he kicked 74 in 2006.
We were drafted in the same year, and the first time I met him was when we turned up for a two-lap time-trial around the 'tan. I just remember seeing this kid with these massive teeth and huge smile. We took off around the 'tan, and he either won it or finished top-three. I finished about eight minutes or so behind him, stumbling across the line, barely able to breathe, and this kid with the smile is there saying: "Great effort! Well done!" I remember thinking "Either this bloke is the biggest smart-arse in the world, or the best bloke in the world."
Events have shown him to be the latter. Without a doubt, he's the best-natured and most positive bloke I've dealt with, and that's across the 15 years that I've known him, with no exceptions.
One thing he doesn't get enough credit for is his toughness - one of the first games I remember seeing him play was at the Whitten Oval in 1994, and he went back with the flight and was pole-axed by John Worsfold. He got up and kicked the goal from about 45, and it was a good indicator of what was to come. He's always gone as hard as anyone when it was his turn.
As an athlete, he had all bases covered - a 100-metre race? No worries, probably the best there. But he was also brilliant if it was 10 x 400s, or an eight-kilometre run. Not many players have that power, speed and endurance. Also overlooked was his freakish upper-body strength - I know when Barry Hall came to the club there was a lot of talk about him bench-pressing 155kg, but Jonno was doing that in about his second year.
That's what made him such a brilliant player - he did so many things so well. You can't play that many games without having a brilliant understanding of how it is played, which was another aspect he had well-and-truly covered.
His other great strength was his resilience - heading into this year, with almost 350 games to his name, he'd missed four possible games. Not one season between 1995 and 2009 was under 21 games. That's unbelievable. Yes, he was lucky he didn't cop a really major injury, but he carried a lot too, that nobody knew about.
But I reckon more than anything, the way he's carried himself this year is a mark of the man. It's the first year he's been hampered by a serious injury, and it's also been the year where the club has had the greatest expectation, and he couldn't have had more things go against him in 2010. But he's given great leadership, he's taken total responsibility for every performance, he's pushed himself through injury and pain, he's given his heart and soul.
That's probably why a lot of his mates, and people who know him, have been a little bit agitated at the calls not to play him. What people don't understand is that opposition sides still have to play their best defender on him, which frees up someone else. Opposition sides still respect what he's capable of.
Another indicator of his commitment to the team is the way he's worked to improve his leadership. The captaincy wasn't something he was desperate for, but he grew into something that wasn't his nature. He was too good a bloke to be as tough as he needed sometimes, but he showed what he would do when his beloved Doggies needed him.
The game will be poorer for his leaving it, and that's a pretty good accolade for any player.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
