Milestone beckons for veteran Brown
MIKE Brown will become only the sixth player in the league’s history to make 250 Gallagher Premiership appearances, if selected for Newcastle Falcons’ Boxing Day visit of Sale Sharks.
Capped 72 times by England and playing 81 times in European competition, Brown’s Championship and domestic cup appearances take him well into the 400s, with the fire burning just as brightly as ever.
“I didn’t even know I was on 249 Premiership games until our media guy told me, if I’m honest, so it’s not something that had been on my radar,” said Brown, the two-time Premiership title winner, who swapped the Twickenham Stoop for Tyneside in the summer.
“Because I’m at a new club all I’m really focused on is just making sure I have as big an impact as possible for the team on and off the field, and that’s the most important thing, rather than appearance milestones.
“I’ve kind of been there and done that a little bit with Harlequins when it comes to playing a certain number of matches and that kind of thing, and I just want to do well for Newcastle rather than taking any personal accolades. I’m at the latter stages of my career so it’s just about making whatever impact I can here with the team, and helping the young lads along.
“This Falcons squad has a huge amount of potential and it’s just waiting to get some success, so that’s where my focus is rather than celebrating playing 250 Premiership games – nice as that might be when I reflect on it later on in my life. I think it’s something nice to look back on, and probably something I’ll appreciate more once I’ve finished playing.”
Only five men in the league’s history have passed the 250 mark, with Brown set to join Richard Wigglesworth (309), Steve Borthwick (265), George Chuter (262), Phil Dowson (262) and Charlie Hodgson (254) in the exclusive club.
Turning the clock back to 2006 when asked to recount his maiden top-flight appearance, it was not quite the stuff of legend, as Brown himself admits.
“I remember my Premiership debut was against London Irish at Twickenham in the old London Double Header, where they used to start the league season with two London derbies,” he laughed.
“The year before I’d been part of the Quins squad which got promoted into the Premiership, getting into the side around the halfway stage of the season, so I’d had a little bit of exposure at first team level before that first Premiership game.
“It was with Deano [Dean Richards] coaching the team, who is obviously my current director of rugby at Newcastle, so there’s a nice symmetry there for the 250th if it comes. Although I don’t remember my first going very well!
“We lost, and let’s just say I didn’t have my best game. I think I passed the ball near our own line, we dropped it and they scored a try, so it wasn’t a great start. I got a whack round the face quite early on from Delon Armitage, which these days would definitely have been a red card, and it was a definite ‘welcome to the Premiership’ kind of day.
“Deano dropped me after that game for a few weeks, so it wasn’t quite the fairytale start!”
Showing his trademark resilience to bounce back stronger, Brown recalls his key influences in and around that Harlequins side.
“Gavin Duffy was our full-back at the time, and he was quite a big influence on me because he was incredible under the high ball,” said the man who scored a try on his last Falcons appearance – the 31-26
home victory over Worcester Warriors on December 10.
“I just remember Deano and Andy Friend at the time telling me my big work-on was improving under the high ball if I wanted to play for Harlequins, and I kind of just got hold of Gavin and asked to work with him. Luckily he was really receptive to it, and now it’s one of my main strengths.
“You were always asking the other guys what extras they’d been doing after the session or away from the club, to make sure you were doing the same or more than them, and it was people like Chris Robshaw, Jordan Turner-Hall, George Robson and those guys. We had a good group who really pushed on, and a lot of it was to do with that work ethic.”
Asked how the Premiership in 2006 compares to the present day, Brown said: “It’s massively different.
“The physicality is immense, defences are much better which means a lot less space on the field, the ball-in-play time is a lot higher and that means a much quicker game. I think all of those factors combined just mean that mentally you have to be on it for absolutely every second of the game, whereas in the early days you could get through parts of a game when you weren’t quite fully firing.”