Nathan Brown

Just being a Knights old boy himself, he played a couple of years here at 99-2000 as a backup halfback to Andrew Johns, and he had a handful of NRL games, then played a bit more elsewhere, and then turned his career to coaching.

He almost got the job when they gave it to Nathan Brown a few years ago, and given a chance again, he's connected with the team, he's connected them, he's reconnected them with the community.

He got buy-in from Cale and Ponk from round one.

I was lucky enough to be at the Knights' first round game against the Cowboys in Las Vegas, and You could see on the field, Caleb Ponga and the players, it was like they were playing a grand final that night.

And, um, 'cause when you've in the four walls, like they're the people I wanna listen to, and then if sometimes having someone outside your circle and them looking at what's going on in your building from afar could be, you know, beneficial.

But in that case I would ring a, you know, a Wayne Bennett, a Nathan Brown, someone that, you know, Frank Ponissi, someone that I respect and trust and, um, have a conversation around what they think that's going on at our club where I don't think reading papers and listening to all these shows and things is actually gonna help me.

So-

Yeah

And, um, yeah, I, I was really lucky.

I had some wonderful coaches coming through.

Um, Nathan Brown, you know, taught me how to play.

Um, he's a really smart coach and I had him in under 20s and, uh, five year- My first years in first grade and I had an assistant coach named Max Ninnis, who a lot of people don't probably know of, but he was a really good technical coach.

And as-- Who's the assistant coach?

Well, my great mate Nathan Brown's gonna be our assistant coach.

He's a very good friend and a great coach.

Uh, so we'll need his expertise 'cause I'll need some help.

But jeez, there's a difference.

And Nathan Brown taught me this when he was coaching, uh, at the Dragons.

He was coaching at the Dragons.

I put a kick in one day and I went high but I didn't go as long and, uh, he came to me and he said, um, "What are you thinking there?" I said, "I'm just trying to go high and bring the forward to." He said, "Great.

A few good years there.

it's interesting like a few years after I'd after I finished Nathan Brown and I are still really good mates actually Nathan had to meet me at the airport to tell me that mum had been killed in a car accident

yeah

so a few years later Brown he actually said to me mate if you go back and have a with your team and Parramatta's team in 2001 they may have held all the records but he said individually your team was that much better it's not funny So he said it should not have been a huge shock to people that you guys actually won that game.

This isn't coaches.

So the Nathan Brown, Sam Mower, Sam Wisemantle, and obviously New South Wales Head Cup coach Nathan Kalis.

So I can tell you Nathan Kalis, he is going to Hull KR next year.

I think he'll be replacing Willie Peters, who he's going to be taking the Papua New Guinea Chiefs job.

He was under a lot of Eddie Jones sort of style.

That's how Jason Rolls had the relationship with him from when he worked with him in England rugby.

Nathan Brown, you always hear Latham Brown.

He's happy to move on.

I'm sure he'd have a different approach to Dozer than he would the likes of Walshie, but I'd love to hear about your experiences with players who have gone straight from playing into coaching, especially when they're coaching recent teammates, love the pod, and up the nights.

The main one I could put there is Nathan Brown.

Do you remember Nathan Brown when he retired from his neck in 2001? I played in that game.

Or 2000 or 2001, he'd done his neck against us and he retired and he coached the next year.

Yeah.

Gaz and Koops.

But Trent Barrett was the main one.

Remember when he slapped Trent Barrett on the sideline? Yeah, that was his first year, right? Yeah, so it was just like – that was probably the hardest thing for Nathan Brown to do that.