Richmond's Daniel Jackson the bolter on AFL player power list Jon Ralph
From: Herald Sun
March 05, 2013 JUST how do you quantify a player's power for a neat and tidy list of 10?
Their ability to shift vast quantities of AFL merchandise from supermarket shelves?
The price they can demand to appear on the football shows that saturate the media?
Or the quiet work they do behind the scenes that actually influences policy and shapes opinions in our game?
Because Buddy Franklin is the king of merchandise, Dane Swan the must-have interview and Adam Goodes the indigenous statesman with a political career beckoning.
Yet a self-described battler with a self-depreciating wit has swept into the players' power list with a bullet.
When the player union chose a representative to sit on Channel 7s drugs summit panel it was Richmond's Daniel Jackson answering the hard questions with aplomb.
It was Jackson marching alongside Brock McLean at a recent gay rights rally; it was him accepting the Jim Stynes Community Leadership Award at last year's Brownlow Medal.
Jackson shows what an extraordinary platform is avaiable for AFL players prepared to publicly push worthy messages.
But he also underlines the missed opportunity for other players given many are too obsessed with the train-play-recover cycle to put their profile to good use.
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