THERE’S A LINE in one of C. S. Lewis’ ‘Narnia’ books that goes like this: “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been a proof that you were not”. The idea is simple: those quickest to volunteer for responsibility often overestimate their readiness, while those who question themselves are the ones most capable of growing into the role.
The quote exemplifies Adelaide captain Jordan Dawson, who became the Crows’ captain in 2023 not because he lobbied for the role behind closed doors or positioned himself as the natural successor, but because those around him felt he was the obvious choice. In the years since, Dawson has come to embody what it means to be a captain so completely that it’s hard to imagine the Crows without him at their centre.
“No and no,” Dawson tells Men’s Health, when asked if he put his hand up for the captaincy, or if he thought he was ready for it. “That’s just not who I am. The main thing was that I wanted to make sure the boys and the club wanted me in that role. Early on, I did feel like a bit of an imposter and didn’t feel comfortable, but I think part of the journey is growing into leadership. I realised that I was made captain for a reason.”
When we catch up with Dawson, the Toyota Australia ambassador is walking his dogs – a kelpie and a border collie with enough combined energy to power the electrical grid of a small town – through his local park before heading to training. It’s four weeks into the 2026 AFL season and a week before Gather Round. Adelaide have won one of their first three games while their captain has been nursing a calf strain. It’s not an ideal start for the 2025 minor premiers, but Dawson is confident they’ll be back at their best sooner rather than later.
“We’ve got a few things that we’re trying to work through at the moment,” he says. “But in saying that, we’re playing some good footy, we’re just not really hitting our straps. We’ve got much better footy ahead of us, and I know we’re capable of competing with, and beating, the best teams in the comp – the home-and-away season last year proved that.”
It certainly did. The Crows secured their third ever minor premiership in 2025, and in a relatively short space of time, Dawson has helped turn a club that once felt stuck between gears into one that can compete for a premiership. The Crows transformation didn’t come from a single tactical shift or recruiting win – though the trade that sent Dawson to Adelaide from the Swans was a major coup. It came from a tightening of standards and a collective buy-in to a single goal.
At the centre of that shift is a captain who leads by example, without theatrics, who has come to represent the model footballer. It is difficult to understate the importance of Adelaide’s three-time best and fairest winner, two-time All-Australian and 2025 AFLPA captain of the year. His impact on the team is perhaps best understood not by his exploits on the field – which are nothing to sniff at – but by the standard he sets.
DAWSON MIGHT REPRESENT what the modern footballer should aspire to be, but his journey to the AFL didn’t follow the traditional pathway. Unlike many prospects who are bundled into academies before they’ve even reached high school, Dawson had few pretensions about pursuing a career in the AFL until not long before he started one. He grew up in Robe, a town with a population of little over 1,000 that rests roughly a three-hour drive South-East of Adelaide along the Limestone coast. There, he spent his childhood secluded from the elite programs that develop so many of the league’s modern stars.
In Robe, fishing is just about the only industry. And indeed, Dawson’s father was a cray fisherman for a time. Some of his fondest memories are of the days he spent riding shotgun in his dad’s Toyota LandCruiser, motoring along the coastline. Dawson still returns to Robe, or his sister’s farm in nearby Lucindale (an area he calls “God’s country”), whenever he can to reset. But while the upbringing was quaint, brimming with opportunities to latch onto an AFL pathway it was not. “Growing up in the country, you’re disconnected from those elite programs and teams, and a lot of the best players in the state are from the city,” Dawson says. “You dream of playing in the AFL, but at the same time you feel a bit detached from the usual pathways.”
But playing junior footy in Robe did bestow Dawson with the passion for the game that is needed to succeed at the highest level. “It was awesome,” he says. “It was the epitome of grassroots footy with that real community feel. The whole town would come to games, or if we were playing in a surrounding town, everyone would go there.”
Eventually, Dawson would make the move to Adelaide to attend Scotch College as a teenager, finally providing him with an opportunity to test his talent in a bigger pond. Given his relatively late arrival in the elite junior scene, it should come as no surprise that at the time, Dawson still didn’t really believe he could make a career out of playing footy.
“It probably wasn’t until I was in my draft year where I thought I could actually make it,” he says. Eventually, he started to stand out. In his draft year of 2015, a series of stellar performances for Sturt in the SANFL put him on the radar of AFL teams. He would wind up as the 56th of 70 players chosen in the 2015 national draft after being selected by the Sydney Swans.
It was a breakthrough, no doubt, and it provided Dawson with some assurance that his confidence in himself wasn’t misplaced. But as the 56th pick, you’re a long way from a tenured career in the AFL. In fact, only around half of draft picks ever play a senior game. In Dawson’s case, history would indicate he was closer to being delisted than to becoming a bonafide star – especially in a crowded Sydney midfield that included Luke Parker, Josh Kennedy, Kieran Jack, Daniel Hannebery, Callum Mills and Isaac Heeney.
Dawson would spend his first few seasons in Sydney predominantly in the reserves, while playing sporadically for the first team. It was during the Swans’ rebuilding era of 2019-2021 that he proved he was going to stick around in the AFL. But for someone who grew up in Robe, the big smoke of Sydney always felt like a long way from home.
At the end of the 2021 season, Dawson requested a trade to Adelaide. “I wanted to be closer to home,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world – because it is, really. “I was in Sydney for six years and it was a great journey, but I wanted to be closer to my family and friends. I never saw myself as really living in Sydney. I was just staying there for a bit.”
Dawson requested a trade to Adelaide – but not specifically the Crows, so there was a possibility he would end up playing for the cross-town rivals of his childhood club. He would ultimately land with the Crows – the team he supported as a kid – and it didn’t take him long to win over the Adelaide faithful. In his first Showdown (the derby between the Crows and the Port Adelaide Power), Dawson kicked the winning goal after the siren.
Within a year of arriving back in Adelaide, Dawson was thrust into the captaincy. He’s been open about how he didn’t feel entirely prepared for the role, but his focus quickly switched from acceptance to adaptation. Leadership, particularly at AFL level, is rarely intuitive. But rather than crumble under the pressure, Dawson reframed the captaincy as something he needed to rise to rather than resist. “Like a lot of things in life, the best things that come to you aren’t necessarily the most comfortable things,” he says. “It’s when you step out of your comfort zone and really embrace a challenge that you figure out if you’re up to it or not.” By every conceivable metric, he has been.
THE PAST 12 months have tested Dawson and the Crows’ resolve. After finishing as minor premiers last year, expectations were high heading into the finals. But win-or-go-home football has a way of exposing the gap between potential and execution. Adelaide were bounced from the finals in straight sets – the first minor premiers to be dealt such a fate since 1983.
“It was disappointing to go out the way that we did,” Dawson says, choosing his words carefully. “But I also understand that what we need to do to bounce back won’t happen overnight.” Rather than overcorrecting, the response within the club has been measured. Conversations at the end of last season centred not just on what went wrong, but on how to build sustained success. “We’ve come into this season trying to make a conscious effort to reward each other for our growth and our ability to overcome challenges,” Dawson says. “We know we’re capable of being the best team in the comp, we just need to learn to rise to the occasion.”
That same philosophy extends to Dawson’s own development. Early in his career, like many young players, he equated effort with output, pushing himself relentlessly in the belief that more was always better. “When you first start out, you push really hard every training session,” he says. “My understanding of my body and what works for me has definitely gotten better. It’s taken a few years to nail that, but I feel like I’ve got that down pat now.”
Yet the most significant evolution has been mental. “I think the biggest difference has been learning how to handle the mental side of it,” Dawson explains. “When everything is based on your performance, depending on how you play you can either have a really good or a really bad week,” he says. As captain, that emotional variance can reverberate throughout the group. The challenge, then, is to stabilise it.
ON SET WITH Men’s Health at the Crows’ high performance training facility, Dawson is climbing in and out of the tray of Toyota Australia’s new Tundra truck in between shots. He has a HiLux SR5 himself, but really, he’s been around Toyotas his whole life and sees an alignment of values between himself and the brand. “Being consistent and reliable is something I pride myself on,” he says, “and that’s something I see in Toyota cars.” His connection with Toyota Australia is rooted in those early experiences in Robe where the cars were simply part of the landscape. “Growing up in a regional area like that, everyone drives a Toyota,” he says. “Including my own family.”
Trips back home to God’s country are part of what helps Dawson switch off and reset – an important tool for any professional athlete accustomed to the spotlight. Daily habits like walking his dogs also make a difference, but Dawson finds particular solace in exploring South Australia, a feeling that is amplified during AFL Gather Round.
Gather Round has quickly become one of the marquee events of the AFL season, and it holds particular significance for Dawson. “It’s an incredible showcase of what Adelaide and South Australia has to offer,” he says. “When Gather Round first came here, we wanted to prove to everyone how much we love the sport here in SA and we’ve absolutely done that.” The expansion of games into venues at Mount Barker, Norwood and the Barossa has also made a big impact, according to Dawson. “It’s really growing footy at a grassroots level and allowing us to showcase these beautiful regions,” he says. In many ways, it’s a return to the environment that shaped him.
When asked about his legacy and how he wants to be remembered by his teammates, Dawson is characteristically selfless. “My philosophy has always been about helping everyone around me get better, not just myself,” he says. “I’d want them to be able to look at me and see everything that I’ve given to the club to leave it in a better position than when I arrived.”
And yet, for all the restraint in how he speaks about himself, there is one ambition Dawson doesn’t dilute. “The dream is to walk away saying that I was a premiership captain,” he says, before quickly making it clear that it doesn’t matter if his own role in securing that premiership is secondary, “or a premiership player if it gets to a stage where I’m not the captain anymore, but I’m able to play and contribute.”
Dawson never set out to be the captain of his childhood club. He even dealt with imposter syndrome once he became it, but he has grown into the role through a willingness to confront the parts of himself that felt unready. The result is a different kind of captain: not the loudest person in the room, but someone who sets the standard through action. Dawson may never have asked to lead, but he has shown exactly why he was always the right choice.
Words: Cayle Reid
Photography: Sam Bisso
Head of Brand: Ben Jhoty
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