The Richmond Football Club has announced that 31-year-old Tigers veteran and former captain Kane Johnson is retiring due to ongoing knee problems.
With this retirement came the announcement by the Tigers that Johnson will be taking up a development role immediately at the club and replacing the spot filled by Craig McRae. These outcomes have come following the appointments of Jade Rawlings as caretaker of Richmond and Craig McRae as the coach of the Coburg Tigers.
Kane Johnson stated that with a start of a new era at Richmond, he had no intention of playing on in 2010. He said that his retirement has arrive earlier than expected because of his knee problems, and believes the timing was right to step aside for the new generation Tigers.
He thanked both the Adelaide Crows and Richmond Tigers for the opportunities that they gave him during his playing career and was proud to have met so many ‘outstanding people over the journey’ and appreciated both clubs support.
Kane Johnson began his AFL career playing with the Adelaide Crows. He was picked number 27 in the 1995 National Draft, when selected. He played 104 games with the Crows between 1996-2002 kicked 44 goals and was a dual premiership player in 1997 and 1998.
He was traded from Adelaide after he requested to return to his home state, Victoria, after he played out his contract till end 2002. He was traded to Richmond at the end of 2002 for Jason Torney, which included a complicated exchange of draft selections that saw picks #2, #18 and #32 go from Richmond to Adelaide and picks #12, #28 and #41 go the other way.
During his time at the Tigers he played 116 games between 2003-2008 and kicked 32 goals. He captained the Tigers from 2005 (in a total of 77 matches, which makes him eighth on the club’s all-time list for games as captain), until he stood down at the end of 2008.
His further club honours include runner up in the clubs best and fairest (The Jack Dyer Medal) in 2003 and 2004 and the winner of the award in 2006.
Both the Richmond Football Club and Senior players Matthew Richardson and current skipper Chris Newman have praised his leadership and friendship throughout his playing days and look forward to working with Kane Johnson in his new development role at the Club as it begins to re-build itself.
Tags: Chris Newman, Jade Rawlings, Kane Johnson, Matthew Richardson
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