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He had his first job as head coach at the NRL before age 30, snapping an eight-year title drought with the glamor of Super League club St Helens before facing the mother of all rebuilds on his return to Australia. .
But when Nathan Brown officially kicks off his three-year contract with the Warriors next month, he may well face his toughest challenge yet.
The 47-year-old Australian is the Kiwi club’s eleventh head coach (there have been two interim coaches) and the latest to take on the task of overcoming a history of underperformance and inconsistency to initially transform the Warriors into a regular final. team and ultimately capture that elusive inaugural prime minister.
When it comes to dating, Brown was a solid, if not spectacular, choice. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first name fans would have thought of when owner Mark Robinson said he was dreaming big in July.
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Although Brown proved successful in the UK (he also led Huddersfield to a Challenge Cup final), his NRL record with the Dragons and Knights is uneven.
However, no one can dispute his experience: Brown has supervised 438 first-grade games in Australia and the UK since 2003, which has not always been the case with previous coach appointments at Mt Smart.
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Nathan Brown will come to the Warriors with no shortage of head coaching experience under his belt.
What the Warriors trust is that all the knowledge and experience he has accumulated has prepared him for success and one of his former players believes that Brown will perfectly complement the team.
Slade Griffin spent two seasons with Brown in Newcastle, where the coach had a significant impact on the former Kiwi international.
Griffin described Brown as a skilled man-manager and an offensive mind whose ability to instill faith in his players could prove invaluable.
“He’s very personal. He has a great personality and he really cares about his players. He creates a very strong bond,” said Griffin, who now works on the club’s Future Warriors program. Stuff. “I think it will be a perfect fit, especially if we are abroad.
“He’s a brilliant offensive coach. I was lucky enough to be a nine because obviously he knew what a nine should do. That helped my game a lot. Whereas at other clubs you can play for fear of making a mistake or something like that, he it really gives you confidence. “
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Slade Griffin represented the Kiwis while playing with Nathan Brown in Newcastle.
Brown’s likeable nature may be one of his best qualities, but coaches don’t last as long as he does without an advantage.
In fact, Brown was confident his expectations would be met before the team parted ways for the offseason.
“Some of the guys played pretty well this year, but he already told them that if you don’t rate your weight, you won’t be playing. So he’s already setting the standards,” Griffin said. “Behind the scenes he still gets mad, but off the field he’s there to chat and he really cares about your personal life.”
A crafty Dragons hooker whose playing career was cut short by a neck injury, Brown was given the coaching reins of St George Illawarra two years later, at the age of just 29.
As one of the biggest brands in the NRL, being in charge of Red V comes with no shortage of expectations and Brown got off to a rocky start with his infamous slap at Captain Trent Barrett.
He found his feet to guide the Dragons to back-to-back preliminary finals in 2005-06, but couldn’t get over the hump and was replaced by Wayne Bennett in late 2008.
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Nathan Brown made significant progress with the Knights, but couldn’t see rebuilding.
After resuming his career in England, Brown finally got a second chance at the NRL in 2016 when he agreed to inherit a disaster in Newcastle.
Rebuilding the roster from scratch was always going to be a painful process, with the Knights collecting two wooden spoons in their first two seasons in charge.
But Brown kept putting up the locks for a competitive club and his vision was vindicated when he landed the pivotal signings of Kalyn Ponga and Mitchell Pearce in 2018, and Griffin also joined after winning a top spot with Melbourne.
While Brown couldn’t see rebuilding, parting ways with the club before the end of the 2019 campaign, Griffin doesn’t think he gets enough credit for the progress he made at Newcastle, which broke a late seven-year drought. this season.
“The first two years they had in Newcastle were really difficult. The situation where they were put in with the (salary) cap … they couldn’t do much, so they had to blood a lot of young people.
“This year is going to have a new set of challenges with the border, but that is something we look forward to and something we see that is not so much an excuse but to be used to our advantage.”
Brown is entering a completely different situation on the Warriors, with the opportunity to set his own mark in what was a promising second half of 2020.
Having made some major improvements to the strikers, led by Tonga enforcer Addin Fonua-Blake, Griffin is excited to see how that impacts the club’s playmakers in the style of Brown, particularly Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.
“Obviously Roger is already a great player. He cares so much about the team, he just tries to do everything,” Griffin said. “But I think instead of doing all the hard yards Roger has to do, [Brown] It could put you in a position to do a little more of the fancy stuff.
“All clubs are quite structured, but I think it really encourages improvised play. Especially with this group of players, it will encourage them to play very powerful, get to good places and put the ball in the hands of the playmakers, give them more. responsibility for the team “.
