Inside story: The 30-minute meeting that convinced Dylan Brown to join Newcastle Knights
A brief meeting and lunch at an iconic beachside pub with Knights coach Adam O’Brien helped convinced Dylan Brown to pull the plug on Parramatta and move to Newcastle. This is how the richest deal in NRL history unfolded.
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Newcastle’s pitch to Dylan Brown began in the office of Knights coach Adam O’Brien. Inside the club’s plush Centre of Excellence about a month ago, Brown and O’Brien sat down for about 30 minutes and talked about the Knights’ plans for the Parramatta five-eighth.
They discussed family, football and O’Brien’s vision for a club he has led to four finals appearances during his five years at the helm.
Money was off limits – that was to come later as the Knights landed on a deal worth about $13 million over the next 10 years.
O’Brien’s priority was to get a feel for Brown and how serious he was about leaving the Eels. Brown’s priority was getting to know whether Newcastle was a genuine option and what the club could offer to make him a better player.
So the Newcastle coach and their No.1 target spent about half an hour together chewing the fat before they were joined by members of the club’s coaching staff and recruitment guru Peter O’Sullivan to discuss in detail how Brown would fit in at the Knights.
Newcastle’s coaching staff had done their homework. They were still in the pre-season so they didn’t have any game footage of how the new-look spine would function with Fletcher Sharpe at five-eighth and Kalyn Ponga pulling the strings from the back.
They did have pre-season footage and it is understood the video package included training vision demonstrating how Brown would complement the Knights’ system and their spine.
The plan wasn’t to use him as a traditional No.7 in the form of Eels’ teammate Mitchell Moses or Brisbane playmaker Adam Reynolds. The Knights viewed Brown as a hybrid half who would play on both sides of the field and work in tandem with Sharpe and Ponga.
Brown would have a licence to roam and exploit his natural running game. Brown’s visit with the Knights finished with a meal at the The Beach Hotel, with its sweeping views of the famous Merewether Beach.
The Knights’ coaching staff had done all they could. The ball was now in Brown’s court.
SULLY’S OBSESSION
Newcastle’s revolving door of halves has been a source of consternation for everyone at the club in recent years and it instantly became a priority for O'Sullivan when he joined the Knights midway through last year.
The club had shown interest in Jonah Pezet but he opted to stay in Melbourne and extend his deal. O'Sullivan had a longstanding interest in Brown, having tried and failed to sign him twice before.
He wasn’t going to be denied on a third occasion. O'Sullivan had originally attempted to lure Brown to the Warriors before he had made his first grade debut, offering a six-year contract worth $3 million.
At the time, Brown was on a $60,000 development deal with Parramatta and the Warriors offer would have resulted in the playmaker earning the richest deal for someone who was yet to play first grade.
O'Sullivan also had a lash at Brown when he was in charge of recruitment at the Dolphins. At the time, there were suggestions he was ready to weigh in with $1 million a season to convince Brown to leave Parramatta.
He wasn’t able to get a deal over the line previously but he was undeterred. This masthead understands that O'Sullivan’s interest and that of the Knights was amplified when they received an email from Brown’s manager Chris Orr in January calling for expressions of interest in the New Zealand international.
The email, which was leaked to the media, urged clubs to register their interest in securing the services of Brown for “season 2026 and beyond”.
It added that “franchise players” don’t come on the market very often. The Knights and O'Sullivan quickly shifted into gear.
“When the email came out, that is when it was game on,” one source said.
THE ARTHUR CONNECTION
When Brown signed his mega-extension with the Eels at the end of 2022, he and his management made sure it included some protection mechanisms.
The deal, believed to be worth nearly $7 million, included a series of options that gave Brown the ability to depart before the end of 2031.
One of those options kicked in at round 10 this year, giving Brown the power to leave the club at the end of 2025 if he wanted to head in another direction.
Brown signed the deal when Brad Arthur was Eels coach and his management insisted the clauses were designed to protect Brown in case there was an upheaval in the playing squad or coach Brad Arthur was sacked.
Arthur was indeed let go midway through last season. Arthur was the man who handed Brown his first chance in the NRL. Brown was close with Arthur’s family – he took his daughter Charlotte to the Dally M medal after she asked whether she could attend.
“When we set his original Parra deal up, we did it to protect him in case anything happened with coaches or massive team changes,” agent Gavin Orr said.
“Dylan had great respect for Brad Arthur. We’ve seen other clubs move players or coaches on and that can change the dynamics of a team really quick.
“We had those clauses in there to safeguard Dylan. He was happy at Parramatta and the way the deal was set up, it could also reward Dylan if he kept performing.”
The twist in the tail is the relationship between Newcastle coach Adam O’Brien and Arthur. They played together in Bateman’s Bay and coached together in Melbourne.
They are so close, O’Brien is also godfather to Charlotte Arthur and Arthur’s son Matt is a member of the Newcastle playing squad.
THE MEGA OFFER
The Knights have copped their share of flak for throwing 10 years and $13 million at Brown. They also knew ordinary wasn’t going to get it done.
If they were going to prise Brown out of Parramatta, it was going to take something extraordinary.
Brown was already on a healthy deal next season – he would have earned in excess of $1 million at Parramatta in 2026.
Newcastle head of football Peter Parr hasn’t been afraid to go out on a limb in order to get a deal done in the past. Nor have the Orr brothers, who have presided over Brown’s career.
Parr and the Orrs put together Jason Taumalolo’s groundbreaking deal in North Queensland while the Orrs were the architects of Daly Cherry-Evans’ lifetime contract at Manly.
As nice as the view was from The Beach Hotel, a five or six year offer from Newcastle wasn’t going to convince Brown to pack up and move to the Knights.
They needed to blow Parramatta out of the water and they arrived at a 10-year term, confident that Brown was worth the investment after conducting their due diligence on the 24-year-old.
It is understood the Knights picked the brains of staff members who had been in New Zealand camp with Brown including their head of high performance Matt Jay, who works with the Kiwis.
The 10-year term was eventually rubber-stamped by the club’s hierarchy including chief executive Phil Gardiner.
“You either piss or get off the pot,” one source said
Brown’s head was turned.
“The opportunity came up to look around and we started that search about two months ago,” Gavin Orr said.
“I don’t think anyone could have envisaged the deal the Knights put to Dylan. Very few clubs could have beaten what Dylan was already on, so it had to be something extraordinary.”
THE FINAL CALL
Newcastle always had a feeling they were fighting an uphill battle to convince Brown to defect but their confidence began to grow last week.
They had been through a similar journey with prop Leo Thompson as he weighed up his future earlier this year.
The longer Thompson vacillated over his future, the more the Knights feared he would leave. In the end he did, accepting a big offer from the Bulldogs to join them from next season.
As Brown took his time to make a call, the more positive it seemed for Newcastle. Brown was clearly taking their offer seriously and at lunchtime on Monday, whispers began to seep out that Brown had told some of his teammates he was moving to Newcastle.
This masthead started to make calls late on Monday and eventually confirmed the news that Brown had decided to accept the Newcastle deal, breaking the story on News Corp websites.
It is understood Brown’s management called Eels head of football Mark O’Neill to confirm that he would indeed leave at the end of the season, a sledgehammer blow to new coach Jason Ryles who had made it his mission to convince his star five-eighth to stay.
As refreshing as the club had become on Ryles’ watch, the money was eventually too great for Brown to refuse. Brown grew up in a home about 30 minutes outside of Whangarei, on the north island of New Zealand.
The family home had a roof, but no insulation. The Browns lived pay cheque to pay cheque. There were no silver spoons in their household.
Brown didn’t go without, but he didn’t have it easy either. The Newcastle deal is life-changing not just for him, but also his family, something he made clear in a social media post as the news filtered out on Monday night.
WHERE TO FOR THE EELS
Parramatta are expected to waive the 10-day cooling off period for Brown as they look to close the book on the saga before they play their first home game of the season on Sunday against the Wests Tigers.
By then, Brown will have addressed his future. The Eels five-eighth has already posted on social media but he will front the media on Wednesday as he attempts to take some of the heat out of the issue before Sunday.
The reception he gets from Eels fans will be intriguing. No doubt, many will be furious with a player who the club backed through the good and bad times in recent years.
Others will be disappointed in the timing – his decision to leave the club comes after an off-season where young halves Ethan Sanders and Blaize Talagi also headed for the exit.
Eels fans will no doubt suggest they would have tried harder to keep one or both if they knew Brown was going to pack his bags and head up the Pacific Motorway.
His decision cuts like a knife, particularly in the wake of their lopsided loss to Melbourne last Sunday afternoon.
The Eels’ priority now is to find a replacement but options of Brown’s quality are thin on the ground. There is more to work with at the end of 2026 when the likes of Lachlan Galvin, Luke Metcalf, Jahrome Hughes, Lachlan Ilias and Tyran Wishart come off contract.
Emerging stars like Jaxon Purdue and Coby Black also become available. The Eels can try to extract a player under contract from a club for next year or they may opt to tread water for 12 months in the halves, save their pennies and load up on one of the big names off contract at the end of next season.
They have some decisions to make but the good news is they have money to spend. Brown’s departure frees up more than $1 million next season. The likes of Bryce Cartwright and Joe Ofahengaue are also off contract at the end of 2025, which means the Eels could have a war chest to go to market.
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Originally published as Inside story: The 30-minute meeting that convinced Dylan Brown to join Newcastle Knights
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