Few footballers can lay claim to a more dramatic reversal of on-field form and fortune than Liam Jones . . . and yet in truth, the metamorphosis was months in the making.
Rewind to April 7, on the eve of the Northern Blues’ season opener at North Port Oval. How well the big bloke remembers the moment.
“It was on the Friday night before the Round 1 VFL game against Port Melbourne. I came out of our main meeting, Josh Fraser said ‘Go with the defenders into their meeting’ and I said ‘Oh, okay’,” Jones said.
“I headed into that meeting and someone said ‘You’re playing back this week, to which I replied ‘I don’t think so’. I then went in to the main meeting and ‘Frase’ said: ‘Jones, we’re going to chuck you in the backline’. I had no idea.”
Thinking back on it now, Jones believed Fraser was out to further his player’s currency as a swingman who could also play ruck – and to say that he was nervous heading into that Boroughs fixture is something of an understatement. Save for a three-game stint at full-back for the AIS years before, Jones had never played there, and as he said: “I knew about the structures on paper, but to go out there and live them was kind of tricky”.
A month of matches up back for Northern – the pick of them against Sandringham when he stood Josh Bruce at Preston – afforded Jones the necessary grounding for last Sunday’s truly memorable one-on-one contest with GWS’ Jonathon Patton.
“It felt like a completely different game,” he said of that most-recent experience. “To be back there watching the ball come in, and not leading or presenting . . . it was exciting to get good at something new.”
In the immediate aftermath of Jones’ slashing showing on Patton, in what was a famous victory over the widely-regarded premiership fancies, Bolton offered measured praise of his full-back and those “little signs in his first game of AFL”.
Jones needed little reminding that this was but a stepping stone and his most important showing is his next – and yet, it is Bolton the teacher upon whom he heaps most praise for getting him to where he now is.
In a heart-to-heart with the senior coach leading into the 2017 season, Jones vowed to leave no stone unturned in terms of his diet and training.
“I told ‘Bolts’ I wanted to put all my focus into my footy so that I’d have no regrets if it wasn’t to work out,” Jones said.
“It was all about giving 100 per cent effort. I thought it and he thought it, and that was the conversation we had.
“Since then, Josh Fraser has been amazing in giving me belief. In the past, if a coach was to come up to me saying ‘Jones, we’re putting you in the backline’, I might have lost confidence because I wasn’t cutting it up forward - whereas now I realise I can play down forward, play up back and play in the ruck, and ‘Frase’ has constantly preached that to me.
“For me this is something new and exciting.”
Liam Jones revelled in his new role against the Giants on Sunday. (Photo: AFL Media)
To the 26 year-old’s eternal credit, Jones has fulfilled his part of the bargain. Physically, he’s quite probably the lightest he’s been in years, whilst mentally he’s in a good place.
As he said: “Getting older and learning to enjoy the game has probably been the biggest thing. It’s been a long time coming, to have lost that fear of failure and to go out there, play with freedom and really enjoy my football”.
Jones’ topsy-turvy time in the game may have earned him more than his fair share of detractors – and yet the external noise has never been an issue for him.
“I’ve always loved football. I slept with a footy when I was a kid and I’ve always enjoyed watching it. It’s hard not to shut it (adverse publicity) out, but I haven’t read a paper for years or watched The Footy Show,” he said.
“I’m at that point where footy is a great job, I love playing it at this level and I just try to do my best.”
Off the paddock, Jones is pursuing studies in sports science at Victoria University, planning for a post-season pilgrimage to his grandfather’s home town in Wales, and, in a break from the norm, learning to tickle the ivories.
Why the piano? The story has its origins in remote Western Australia when Jones recently joined Andrew Walker and Sam Petrevski-Seton on that pilgrimage to Samo’s place – not far from where his (Jones’s) paternal grandmother was taken as part of the stolen generation.
“When I went to Hall’s Creek I saw this big piano sitting in the lobby of the hotel we were staying at,” Jones said.
“I remember saying to ‘Walks’ ‘Gee, I wouldn’t mind playing piano’, he said ‘You should follow it up when you get back’ and when I got back I teed up a teacher.”
The legions of Carlton supporters watching on will be truly heartened to learn that Jones, in is his eighth season of football at the elite end, is firmly of the view that the best is yet to come.
“I was only thinking about this earlier this year, that if I actually lined up on myself I’d destroy the player I used to be a few years ago – fitness-wise, strength-wise, speed-wise be it forward or back,” he said.
“The way I’m seeing the game is better than I ever have.”
