Nathan Brown quietly confident future is bright for three-time wooden spooners
PAUL CRAWLEY, The Daily Telegraph
January 8, 2018 2:57pm
NATHAN Brown won’t waste your time making big, brash promises about what the Newcastle Knights can achieve in 2018.
But if you listen carefully, Brown can still fill you with hope that in the not-too-distant future the Knights can be a club that Newcastle and the entire Hunter Valley “can be proud of”.
The Knights are coming off three consecutive wooden spoons. Therefore, no one will be expecting them to fight for the premiership this year.
But what about the year after … and the year after that?
Newcastle have made some key signings but, more significantly, they are now owned by the powerful Wests Group, which recorded a $23 million profit last year.
“With Wests coming on board I think it gives everyone confidence,” Brown said as he sat at the outdoor café which adjoins the Knights’ training ground at the thriving Wests Mayfield complex, one of six registered clubs owned by the Wests Group.
“Not only us but I think it gives player managers and players from other clubs a lot of confidence because we are financially a stable club now.
“Wests aren’t going to go throwing good money after bad but they are not in it for us to have a bad footy team.
“They want us to be a strong club again and they want to give the town and the whole Hunter Valley a team they can be proud of.
“Our expectations should be that the team is going to be better this year.
“But where that takes us I can’t sit here and tell you because the thing with younger players is that they develop at different rates.
“We feel the younger players are more ready for first grade, so that does give you confidence it will take us further forward.
“We are definitely very optimistic that the growth of the team will improve a fair bit.”
After just one win in 2016, the Knights had five last year.
But it was the way in which the team consistently competed that won widespread respect.
“People will say it wouldn’t be hard to improve on the first year but we got five wins and we had a lot of games we lost where we started well and we led a lot of games,” Brown said.
“We weren’t quite good enough to hang on and win but when you are leading games and starting really well, that is a real good sign that you are moving forward and a sign of the physical improvement. A lot of the younger guys have got 30 or 40 NRL games behind them and this is going to be their third pre-season.
“We are hopeful that a lot of those kids can get a similar sort of growth which they got the year before physically.”
And with the likes of young stars Kalyn Ponga, Connor Watson, Tautau Moga and Herman Ese’ese joining more seasoned recruits in Mitchell Pearce, Aidan Guerra, Chris Heighington, Jacob Lillyman and Slade Griffin, Brown is confident that competition for positions will bring even greater improvement.
“Apart from Jacob Lillyman, all of our recruits played in sides that finished in the grand final or the second-last week of the finals,” Brown said.
“So they are obviously players that are certainly going to improve our squad.
“And Jacob Lillyman played Origin last year.
“They are all players that we feel can help our squad improve a lot.”
And with the Wests Group on board, there will also be a greater emphasis on local player development.
The Knights now employ Scott Dureau as the full-time SG Ball coach and Rory Kostjasyn is in charge of the Harold Matthews team.
“I’m not sure many clubs have that,” Brown said.
“They are both doing a terrific job with the younger kids.
“We are a development club and to be a development club you have to have it set up and you have to finance it properly.
“We have seen since Gus (Gould) has been at Penrith, they have provided so many players to the game.
“And we’d like to think with Wests’ support that one of the key things is making sure our juniors are strong and making sure they can get the best coaching and the best strength and conditioning.
“It all costs money. We wouldn’t be able to do it to the standard you’d like (without Wests), so all that sort of stuff helps the club grow.”
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