SACKED: Ben Brown reveals the turbulent contract negotiations that cost him his career at North Melbourne

It didn’t help him that the perennially shaky North Melbourne was in the process of doing the same thing.

Brown was coming off 188 goals across the previous three seasons as one of the Kangaroos’ cult heroes with his shaggy locks, elongated run-up as part of his goalkicking routine and piercing accuracy.

Yet when he and his manager Adam Ramanauskas started work on chasing a deserved big contract, the Kangaroos – for a time – didn’t have a permanent coach and were still waiting on Brady Rawlings to take up his position as football boss.

Even when the prospect of a lucrative three-year deal was on the table – with a fourth year a haggling point – the Covid pandemic brought not only a grinding halt to the signing of new AFL contracts, but also for a time the game itself.

“It was a really interesting time at the end of that 2019 season … I had just had a big three years,” Brown told the Sacked podcast.

“At that stage it felt like I was at the peak of my powers.

“We (Brown and Ramanauskas) talked to the footy club, but we didn’t really have a lot of people to talk to at that point because we didn’t have a senior coach, we didn’t have a general manager of footy, so the ability to communicate and talk about contracts at that time was incredibly limited.

“We were sort of told ‘you’ll just have to wait’ … which was fine.

“We started out apart. We were working to come together, as I think happens with pretty much every contract negotiation.

“Then part of the way through those discussions, Covid hit and there was a contract freeze.”

The deal on the table was for more than $800,000 per year for three seasons, but Brown and his management wanted to lock away a fourth season.

“My mind was ‘I’ve had a few good years … this is going to be the last (big) contract really. And I was thinking (that the) four years would give that extra security of knowing I was at the club for longer,” he said.

“We were right at the beginning of a discussion, like of course we are going to say ‘four years’, and they’re going to say ‘three years’.”

The tipping point came after he suffered a season-ending knee injury midway through the club’s fractured 2020 hub experience.

The three-year offer was rescinded.

Instead of securing four years, he realised he was going to have to find a new footy home.

“As things transpired my form was not great in the hub … we were struggling as a team, and probably struggling with a new system (under Rhyce Shaw) and how to implement it,” he said. “And I got injured part of the way through the year.

“I was out for the remainder of that season. So when the contract freeze ended, it went from ‘we’re having a negotiation’ to ‘there’s no contract for you, and you’ve got to look somewhere else’. I was told that (in the exit interview) but I knew before.

“It was relatively clear to me that they wanted to move in a different direction.”

As brutal as the rejection felt back then, Brown can now understand the club’s rationale, even if it could have been handled more sensitively.

“I wasn’t the only one who was moved on at the end of that year,” he said. “I think they decided that they wanted to go down the youth route.

“I don’t necessarily harbour any poor feelings towards anyone for how that played out.

“It was unfortunate (as) I had seen myself as ‘I’m going to be a North Melbourne player forever’.”

Brown ended up with a four-year deal … with Melbourne, not North Melbourne.

CHASING THE DREAM

Brown was born into a famous Tasmanian football family but he didn’t get any favours, having been overlooked in multiple drafts.

His grandfather Jim was a Tassie footy champion who became a leading local government politician; his uncle James was a member of Collingwood’s drought-breaking 1990 flag team.

Brown played junior footy with Devonport, then a teacher convinced him to try out for the Tassie Mariners under 18s, and the would-be ruckman found himself playing as a key forward one day when the coach wanted to try someone else out.

He excelled from the outset.

“I kicked goals in a couple of games and then, as you did when you are a 17-year-old in that era, you go on to Bigfooty and I saw my name pop up and people saying ‘Oh this guy from Tasmania … this big weird, looking guy’.

“That sort of lit the fire (on pursuing an AFL dream).”

But he suffered an ACL injury in 2010, crushing his hopes of being picked in his draft year.

“It was actually a teammate who ran through me … it was Jimmy Webster,” he said. “So, thanks Jimmy!

“I think that was actually a key moment for me because after that, I didn’t play basketball any more. I (said) ‘I want to make it to the next level in football’ so I put everything into my rehab and yeah, it took me another four drafts to make it.”

TURNING DOWN THE PIES

Brown recalls watching those drafts come and go: “I remember watching it (the draft), watching the picks roll through on my laptop in my room and … when your name wasn’t called … I’m like ‘All right, I better go back to studying for my exams.”

Brown was in Melbourne staying with his uncle ahead of one of those rookie drafts when Collingwood came calling.

“I remember (then Magpies recruiting boss) Derek Hine and Jason Taylor … about an hour after the rookie draft, they drove to my uncle’s office in Cheltenham and they sat me down and said ‘we’d like to have you a part of the VFL program’. I turned them down and said I wanted to stay in Tassie.”

Brown played senior football with Glenorchy, then took up the chance to come and play for Werribee, North Melbourne’s affiliate VFL club at the time.

“Scotty West (the coach) sold me the world and said he was going to play me as a key forward,” he said. “That year we were the tallest forward line that I think has ever existed … We had Majak Daw and Daniel Currie coming back from North, we had young Mason Wood in that team, and Ben McKinley and Ben Warren.

“Somehow they were able to fit me in and that year gave me the opportunity to play as a key forward and show what I could do.

“With the alignment with North Melbourne, I suppose I was under their eye quite a lot.”

BECOMING A ROO

Brown sensed North Melbourne was interested ahead of the 2013 national draft, but a late call from Essendon recruiting boss Adrian Dodoro almost flipped the script.

“I had a call from Adrian Dodoro an hour or so before the draft saying ‘maybe strap in’.”

He watched the draft at home with his parents, with his five younger brothers and his grandmother, and the tension was almost palpable when North Melbourne paused for a moment ahead of pick 47.

“They just sat there for a minute and had a discussion,” Brown said.

The Roos were choosing between Brown and Joel Tippett but Brown won out. They got Tippett in the rookie draft.

He was a Kangaroo and within days he was organising a passport, heading overseas for the first time and rooming with new teammate Robin Nahas on the club’s high altitude training camp to Utah, in the US.

CULT HERO STATUS

North Melbourne’s media boss at the time, Heath O’Loughlin, sensed early on that Brown was likely to become a club cult hero, even when he was booting goals in the VFL.

O’Loughlin was right.

Brown debuted in round 14, 2014, against Melbourne, and made an instant impact.

“I was so incredibly nervous … I think I settled into the game about maybe halfway through the third quarter.

“I just remember taking a mark and everyone telling me to go back and have a shot. It went pretty straight and it was important, particularly for my grandma.”

After kicking the first of his 360 AFL goals, Brown staged an on-ground tribute to his late grandfather Jim Manson, who had died four years earlier.

“He passed away in 2010 and he never got to see my first goal,” Brown recalled. “He was an avid collector and if you went into his den … he had bookshelf after bookshelf of stamps and postcards … I think the fact that someone had broken into the house … that was pretty stressful and he had a bit of a weak heart as it was. It was pretty tough for my grandma, who’s one of the most amazing women you’ll ever meet.”

Brown fitted into a very competitive North Melbourne side and thrived on the experience, kicking 18 goals in his first 11 games.

He was notable for more than kicking goals – with his hair and his long run-up to goal.

What was the reason for the hair?

“The hair came about because I’d moved out of home and my mum couldn’t tell me to go and get a haircut anymore,” he laughed.

“So I grew it out and it was honestly probably laziness more than anything else that I didn’t want to go to the barber.”

And the long run up to goals?

“I was a ruck growing up, so I’d never really developed anything as a set shot routine.

“It started out with my coaches at Glenorchy Footy Club and then Keenan Reynolds at Werribee when I was there … it was just what I felt comfortable with.

“It was more basic than it looked … it was ‘run straight’, ‘kick straight’, ‘follow through straight’. If I did everything straight, the ball should go straight.”

BACK TO BACK PRELIMS

Brown never felt as if he fit the typical AFL mould, but he thrived in a side that had plenty of role models and a coach – Brad Scott – who backed him in.

“I had a lot of really good role models … that pushed me along and pushed me to be a better player,” he said. “The likes of Drew Petrie when I came to the club, I was able to learn off someone of that calibre who was probably in the back part of his career but you know who taught me so much.”

In his ninth game, Brown kicked four goals in an elimination final victory over Essendon, including three in a critical third term.

“I still remember kicking a goal in the third quarter and I can take myself back to the feeling of it because we were in the midst of a huge comeback at that point.

“I think it was (after kicking) the third one … it felt like the stadium was shaking.”

The Roos made it through to a preliminary final against Sydney but were no match for the Swans, even though 21-year-old Brown kicked the opening goal.

They made it to the preliminary final the following year too, but this time the Kangaroos pushed West Coast for most of the game in Perth, kicking the first three goals before being run down.

“It probably hurt us that we didn’t make the top four in any of those years.”

North Melbourne played finals again in 2016, having started the year with nine consecutive wins before injuries derailed the season.

But the club’s fortunes were about to change significantly.

SACKINGS AND BROWN’S BEST SEASONS

North Melbourne shocked the footy world at the end of 2016 by controversially pushing four veterans into retirement – evergreen games record holder Brent Harvey, Drew Petrie, Michael Firrito and Nick Dal Santo.

It rocked the club, especially with the decision on Harvey, who had 25 disposals in his 432nd and final game.

“I remember that feeling ‘wow, that’s just a big decision’,” Brown said. “It really changed the course of the club in a lot of ways. And you look at where the club’s been for the last 10 years … that signalled a big change in the direction we were going.

“I think we played off essentially for the wooden spoon the following year, so it was a big shift.”

But while the Kangaroos plummeted, Brown flourished, kicking 63 goals in 2017, 61 in 2018 and 64 in 2019.

He was twice runner-up in the Coleman Medal, and finished third in another season.

“I landed at North Melbourne at a time when they were searching for a third key forward and I came in and probably kicked a couple of goals at the right time,” he said.

“I worked pretty hard for what I got and put a lot of time into areas of my game to get myself to that level. I was very fortunate that I had a coach in Brad Scott, who really backed me.”

His biggest haul in a game came at the back end of the 2019 season, when he kicked 10.1 to individually outscore Port Adelaide by three points.

He was one of the dominant forwards in the game, and his form was all the more remarkable given the team’s on-field struggles and the sacking of Scott as coach earlier that year.

“I remember coming into the football club (the day Scott was sacked) and all the players were standing around and listening to the press conference, and sort of wondering what’s going to change,” he recalled.

“So it was certainly going to be a period of change.

“It’s definitely emotional too because Brad had put so much faith in me as a player and the kind of way the team played (under Scott) really suited me.”

He couldn’t have realised at that moment that 18 months later, he too would be gone from North Melbourne.