Jonathan Brown took a significant step towards playing in the Brisbane Lions’ season opener against Hawthorn on Saturday 22 March by coming away unscathed from the Club’s modified intra-club match at Burpengary on Friday.

Brown booted two goals in his first competitive hitout for 2014, but more importantly showed no signs of the foot injury which hampered much of his pre-season.

“I was getting pretty sick of running around on back ovals, to be perfectly honest,” Brown told The Courier-Mail.

“I rocked up (on Friday) and saw my name wasn’t on the list for running so I was pretty excited to get out there and finally play some footy.

The former skipper will get some more valuable match practice under his belt this Saturday against the Sydney Swans as part of the Moreton Bay Central Sport Complex’s ‘Festival of Footy’.

“I was great to have a fair dinkum hit-out. I had no worries with the foot either, so I’ll progress to the Swannies game and play part of that hopefully,” he said.

“I’ve still got three weeks to go until Round 1 so there is plenty of training to go under the belt too so I’m pretty confident about where I’m at.”

Former Collingwood forward Jackson Paine and draftee Lewis Taylor also made their first appearances in Lions colours last Friday as part of the intra-club match.

Taylor was particularly lively, while Paine showed no ill effects of his post-season shoulder surgery with some nice marks across half-forward.