Newcastle‘s powerbrokers spent too much time debating if they could sign Dylan Brown, and not enough time pondering whether they should.
Now Brown is heading to the steel city on the richest deal ever signed in rugby league, reportedly worth up to $14 million over 10 years from 2026.
It means next year the Knights will have the two most expensive players in the NRL on their books.
Brown’s reported salary will fall just short of the $1.4m a year being paid to superstar fullback Kalyn Ponga and can rise further when next the salary cap grows.
The two players’ combined salary comes to almost 25 per cent of the club’s entire salary cap next season.
Kalyn Ponga of the Knights is tackled by Dylan Brown. Getty
Will it help them break a premiership drought that stretches back to 2001?
Individually, both Ponga and Brown are excellent rugby league players.
Ponga is a superstar at what he does. Brown has a lot of talent but is probably yet to produce it consistently enough to be considered in the same elite category.
His reputation to date has largely been built on what experts say he’s capable of, not what he has actually achieved.
Brown is a potentially excellent five-eighth. He is not a halfback.
If anyone wants to argue that he has the ability to take control of a team as senior playmaker, watch Parramatta’s horror show against Melbourne on Sunday.
In fact, go and watch any Eels game from last season in which Mitchell Moses did not play.
In the absence of halfback Moses, the Eels look rudderless. It’s a theme that paints a vivid picture of Brown’s ability – or inability – to do the role.
“This is not a criticism … This is just a fact. Dylan is a six,” former Knights player Matty Johns, who has coached some of the best playmakers in the game, told Fox League on Monday night.
“Very good six. But he ain’t a seven.”
Cooper Cronk – one of the best halfbacks of the modern era – replied, “I was disappointed in what Dylan Brown delivered when Mitchell Moses was out last year”.
If Cronk and Johns doubt someone has the ability to play halfback, there is a very good chance they won’t be a halfback.
And what Newcastle desperately needs is a halfback.
Dylan Brown escapes the clutches of Jackson Hastings. Getty
Brown might be a good acquisition if there was already a quality No.7 at Newcastle who he could complement.
With Brown at six, Ponga at fullback, and a bona fide halfback calling the shots, you certainly have a premiership contender on your hands.
Putting Brown into the current Knights team might make them a marginally better outfit, but it doesn’t solve their biggest issue.
They haven’t had a top-line halfback since Mitchell Pearce left in 2021.
“It’s been proven you need representative-class playmakers to challenge for premierships in the competition. That’s just a given,” Phil Gould said on Nine’s 100% Footy on Monday.
“There’s only a handful of them that can get the job done… Dylan Brown is probably one of the more explosive young ball-runners in the competition, [so] I can see why they’ve taken the gamble.”
Penrith superstar Nathan Cleary explained how a Brown-Ponga combination might work.
“There has been a lot of talk around him being a six and not a seven, and he has obviously been signed to Newcastle as a seven,” Cleary told 100% Footy.
“But one thing about his game that I really like is how square he plays. I believe that will open up so much room for Kalyn out the back.
“I think him and Kalyn could form a real dynamic duo, and a dangerous duo to come up against.”
Oh, what Newcastle fans – like myself – would do to have Nathan Cleary move to the Hunter.
There is no doubt both Brown and Ponga are individual attacking weapons, and the Knights have others in the likes of Bradman Best and Fletcher Sharpe.
But without a genuine halfback, this long-suffering supporter fears fans will see the same old issue at Newcastle next year – the team getting inside the red zone and then falling to pieces.
Let’s pray to Darren Albert that I’m wrong.