Jonathan Brown is a throwback.

In every sense, the former Brisbane Lions champion harks back to days when players thought “accessorising was a Gladstone bag containing a corned beef sandwich and an apple“.

Brown was a hard, tough and courageous man on the field.

• All hail Jono Brown, the anti-Buddy 
• Goodes: aggressive, confrontational and right 
• Women in the AFL? You must be joking…

Have a look at the 2003 AFL Grand Final, when Scott Burns worked up a head of steam and knocked him into next week. (Brown came back and kicked two goals.)

Or the plenty of times thereafter he left the playing arena dazed and confused.

An all-too-familiar sight: Jonathan Brown being helped off in a daze. Photo: Getty

His comments on Fox Footy on Monday night were those of a man who’d given his heart and soul for a footy team.

But times change, big fella.

And, to be frank, questioning the courage or, more appropriately, the pain tolerance of Gary Ablett was ridiculous.

Who does Brown think he is? How does he know what Ablett is feeling?

He claimed “doctors would not be clearing (Ablett) if he wasn’t sound”.

So Jonathan Brown has a direct line to the Suns’ medical department it seems.

If you want to find out the fitness of Gold Coast, forget the injury list on their website, just give Jono a call.

“I believe now that Gary needs to get back on the field,” Brown rasped.

“There’s an obligation to do everything in your powers to play football … Even more so as a leader. You can guarantee every player on that list is looking to him as a leader.”

It appears, on my reading, that Brown is accusing Ablett of not doing ‘everything in his powers’ to get back on the park – about as pointed an arrow as you can sling in this game.

Brown was a champion, a triple-premiership player who inherited Wayne Carey’s mantle as the biggest and toughest forward in the game.

But he played on about two seasons, and three or four concussions, too long.

Part of his appeal is that he calls it like he sees it.

But to question the courage of a footballer is incredibly poor form.

(And just a couple of weeks after advising Nick Riewoldt to consider retirement because of persistent head knocks.)

If Ablett is reluctant to use pain killers or anti-inflammatories, perhaps that’s because he believes interrupting the body’s usual flow of information from limb to brain means he’ll be opening himself up to further problems down the road.

Wayne Carey’s shoulder problems persist to this day. Photo: Getty

Carey himself wrote in April that he wished he had Ablett’s character.

“A part of me wishes I’d been as strong as Ablett during stages of my playing career,” he wrote in The Age.

“I ended up having three shoulder reconstructions and now I’ve been told I need a shoulder replacement. It’s little more than a decade since I retired and I’m having to go under the knife again.

“As an example, I’m struggling to lift my second daughter, who’s just five months old. She was born prematurely and is still tiny, but I just can’t raise my left arm above my shoulder.”

Late in the 2007 season, West Coast Eagles star Daniel Kerr suffered a finger injury.

He had surgery to reattach the tendon to the ring finger in his left hand and was advised by surgeons to avoid playing for the rest of the season, even though the Eagles were in premiership contention.

The Eagles went out of the finals in straight sets, with Daniel Chick – a man who earlier in his career had part of his finger amputated to avoid persistent dislocations – toiling for the cause.

The point is, everyone is different. What’s good for Jonathan Brown, or Wayne Carey, or Daniel Chick, isn’t good for everyone.

Brown’s argument that the young Suns side needs their leader out there is also questionable – their season is cooked anyway. The team is decimated by injuries to key men, not just Ablett.

Perhaps the Suns need to stand on their own.

Ablett has more to his life than football.

So he may not be remembered as the toughest player of all time.

But he’ll be remembered as one of the very best.

[polldaddy poll=8906997]