Life’s all about change, and Youi’s the insurer for all the changes – big and small – that happen to you. That’s why the Brisbane Lions and Youi have teamed-up for the ‘Moments of Change’ series, where each week they’ll look back at some of the defining moments that have shaped the club you know today.

Jonathan Brown was carried from the Gabba on a stretcher badly concussed. Again. It wasn’t the way the magnificent career of the ever-inspirational Brisbane Lions centre half forward was meant to end, but it was almost inevitable.

Such was the Brown courage and competitiveness, such was his commitment to his team, his club and his jumper, that time and again he put both above himself and his own well-being.

Left with 15 plates and 64 screws in his face after a series of sickening head knocks and ‘about 20’ concussions, he had refused to call time until he had fulfilled his mission to resurrect the club he loved so dearly.

He’d lived the great times. Four grand finals, three premierships, 15 finals, 12 finals wins and 79 wins overall in his first 105 games as a pillar in arguably the greatest side of all time. And he was only 23.

But the next 105 games had brought just two finals, one finals win and 66 wins overall. He was no longer the captain of a team that had slipped to mediocrity, having handed the mantle to Jed Adcock for his 15^th season, but still he felt an obligation to lead his club back to the top.

It was his sole motivator. He’d experienced the joys of team success, the countless personal accolades and a national adulation that extended far beyond the Lions. He was a revered figure among fans of all clubs. You loved him playing for your club or you wished he played for your club.

After his triple premiership captain Michael Voss had retired in 2006 Brown led the revival as co-captain in 2007-08 and sole captain 2009-12. He shared the role with Adcock in 2013 before stepping down. But still he was as driven as ever.

As hard as he tried, as much as he sacrificed, the reality was that one man could not do it all on his own. The football cycle that is based on equalisation, together with other factors beyond his control, was too much. 

In the end, it took his then four-year-old daughter Olivia to make the decision he had stubbornly refused to make. To end the battering. To finally put himself and his family first. To retire from the game in which he had been one of the all-time greats.

Olivia, older sister to Jack, had watched with mother Kylie, pregnant with daughter Macy, as her father was ko’d for the last time on Saturday afternoon 14 June 2014, in a Round 13 fixture with the GWS Giants at the Gabba.

The Lions were 17 points up at the time of the sickening collusion, which was met with fearsome quiet and later loud applause as he made his exit. That they went on to lose to the competition’s youngest team for the first time by 45 points didn’t matter. This was more important than football.

While Kylie never pushed the great man to hang up the boots many did. Like his former coach Leigh Matthews and countless teammates and close friends. The medics suggested strongly that he would be wise to give it up.

Deep down he knew it was the right decision, but as he revealed later in his autobiography “Jonathan Brown: Life and Football”, it took Olivia to get it done.

He recounted asking her if she wanted her father to keep playing. “She looked at me in the eyes and said, “No, you can’t play footy any more. You can only play footy if the Lions come down and play on the grass with us at our place’.

“That’s when it finally became real that I was going to retire. I finally acknowledged that I was still forgetting stuff, still had headaches and still had problems with my balance.”

The accidental collision with the knee of Giants player Tom Bugg was the last of a series of brutal clashes headed by one with teammate Mitch Clark in 2011 which had Lions doctor Paul McConnell fearing for Brown’s life.

As McConnell, now in his 25^th year as a Lions doctor, later revealed: “To sum it up in layman’s terms it was clear that something was seriously wrong with him. He started what is called Cheyne-Stokes respiration which is an irregular breaking pattern often seen in the last days of a patient’s life.

“I have had a lot of experience working in intensive care and accident and emergency units and I honestly thought he was going to die. Thankfully an ambulance arrived very quickly. He didn’t move at all until we started moving away from the Gabba.

“I would say he was totally and utterly unconscious for at least five minutes, maybe six or seven. It was one of the worst injuries I have seen in my life. In all honesty I wasn’t confident that he was going to survive until he started moving his limbs as we were driving up the ramp into the Princess Alexandra Hospital.”

Thirteen days after he was carried semi-conscious from the Gabba one last time he was back to bid one last farewell to the Lions, doing a lap of honour at halftime of the clash with North Melbourne.

Fittingly, the Lions, 17^th on the ladder, sent the big fella out with a gutsy four-point win over the seventh-placed North Melbourne. Just. After adding 7-3 to 1-2 in the second term to lead by 21 points at halftime they hung on as rain hit in the second half.

Pearce Hanley (34 possessions) and Dayne Zorko (20 possessions and a goal) led the Brownlow Medal votes, but Joel Patfull at centre half back was the rock on which the win was built. It was a debut that Dan McStay will never forget.

Coincidentally, Brown had debuted in Round 5 2000 on the same day as Fremantle champion Matthew Pavlich. He didn’t play as long as 353-gamer Pavlich, of even as often during their shared career due to injury and suspension, but the comparative statistics are compelling.

Brown had a career win ratio of 57.3% to Pavlich’s 47.2%. He kicked 2.3 goals per game to Pavlich’s 2.0 and averaged 0.5 Brownlow Medal votes to Pavlich’s 0.4. And he averaged 7.1 marks, 1.9 contested marks and 3.0 marks inside 50 per game to Pavlich’s 6.0, 1.4 and 1.9. Phenomenal.

Ironically, Brown bid farewell to the Lions as Ash McGrath, the last of the premiership players still playing, had returned for his first game of the 2014 season. It was the first of six farewell games before he joined his long-time skipper in retirement.

It had been a slow process as the club’s 26 premiership players finally called time, but even allowing for those who played elsewhere after the Gabba the Lions all were done.

It was a retirement procession that began with Marcus Ashcroft (2003), Shaun Hart, Alastair Lynch and Craig McRae (2004), and followed through Martin Pike, Darryl White(2005), Blake Caracella, Clark Keating, Brad Scott, Aaron Shattock, Michael Voss (2006), Chris Johnson, Beau McDonald, Chris Scott (2007), Robert Copeland, Nigel Lappin, Mal Michael (2008), Jamie Charman, Tim Notting (2009), Jason Akermanis, Daniel Bradshaw, Richard Hadley (2010), Luke Power (2012) and Simon Black (2013). And finally Brown and McGrath (2014).

The CV of the now 40-year-old Lions champion turned media megastar was extraordinary. A three-time Merrett/Murray Medallist, two-time All-Australian, Coleman Medallist, two-time AFLPA Best Captain, three-time AFLPA Most Courageous Player, Victorian captain and winner of the AFL Mark of the Year – an insane effort running with the flight of the ball in 2020. Among countless others.

He was inducted with teammate Simon Black into the AFL Hall of Fame in 2002 to formally close a career like few others and will forever be loved by AFL fans of all loyalties.

Brown’s retirement in 2014 stamped the official end of an era. A significant moment of change in Brisbane Lions history.  The beginning of a new era and the quest for more of the same.

There are lessons in the careers and contributions of each of the premiership stars, but if there is one special takeout from the Brown legacy for the new breed of Lions it is loyalty to the jumper. The son of a Lions player, he was born into a Lions family and left the club a Lions legend.

It’s precisely the sort of feeling that Chris Fagan is building now. 

Thanks to our friends at Youi for helping bring this series to life.