AFL Finals 2021: Ben Brown opens up on leaving North Melbourne, personal battles, Demons’ finals charge
After a brutal exit meeting from North Melbourne, several clubs pitched for Ben Brown’s services in 2021. But Simon Goodwin’s presentation stood out.
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Ben Brown’s recall of the day that would become a career turning point is so clear he doesn’t just remember the opponent that crushed him on that miserable afternoon.
He can itemise in forensic detail the nature of the whooping handed to him by Sydney VFL defender Kaiden Brand.
If Brown does end up with a premiership medallion slung around his neck in three weeks time it will be wife Hester who will deserve the plaudits after her support during an 18-month period that has been the most challenging of his career.
It has involved a hellish hub existence, multiple surgeries, the change of clubs after the Roos basically disowned him, the miscarriage of a twin daughter and the joyful arrival of second child Esme Elisabeth.
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But should Brown become a premiership player Brand might get a little shout-out too for the lesson he taught him mid-year — and the constructive changes it forced upon his game.
In that Round 6 VFL contest after much-hyped Demons recruit Brown was dropped to the VFL he managed only four possessions, no marks and no scoring shots.
It would force Brown to recalibrate his style of play and truly buy into the defensive side of Melbourne’s game that is non-negotiable, as well as reassess what made him successful off the field.
“Being dropped in the middle of the year was the best thing for me,” says a relaxed and expansive Brown from the Joondalup Resort in Western Australia as Melbourne awaits preliminary final opponent Geelong on Friday night.
“I needed to go back and find myself and find my best game and I had one really poor game in the VFL after being dropped and then I had a bit of a mindset shift.
“Kaiden Brand, who used to play for Hawthorn, did me a real favour by wiping the floor with me. He well and truly towelled me up that day. I was well and truly beaten but it ended up being a real turning point for me from a mental point of view.
“It was about simplifying things and not being so worried about the whole picture, about going to each contest as a chance to grow. I put things in place so that I was able to keep focusing on the things that were really important. And building a few things outside footy to make sure I was more rounded as a person. So all of that combined, really assisted me in getting back to a place where I needed to be.
“In the following few weeks I really built from there and I knew by the time I had four or five weeks in the VFL. I was ready to go and I would have an impact when I truly got back.
“I have got to a place where I am really happy and enjoying life. I am enjoying being out there and wanting the big moments, which is pretty important at this time of year.”
So how did it all go wrong at North Melbourne in that hell-ride of a 2020 season and ultimately present Melbourne with such a chance to secure the key position forward they needed?
Brown is more intent on forging ahead with the positives of his new career at Melbourne but agrees he has got to his happy place as a more rounded footballer and person only after the harsh lessons of the past 18 months.
THE KANGAROOS ANNUS HORRIBILIS
“I suppose ironically I have had to deal with some demons over the past 18 months and it’s been good to work through that. It’s taught me a lot in terms of not only football as a person but myself and what I am capable of,” Brown says.
“Not only from a physical point of view, but a mental point of view.”
No player truly basked in Queensland hub-life, but for North Melbourne the experience was especially disastrous.
The Roos stunk it up on field, coach Rhyce Shaw was battling his own personal demons and Brown couldn’t get a kick for the first time in his career after successive seasons of 63, 61 and 64 goals.
“Obviously, we weren’t playing great footy at the time as a club and a lot was going on. We were up in the hub and that experience for me and my family was pretty difficult. Hester was pregnant with our second child and was pretty crook most of the time and we had a one-and-a-half year old who was pretty shy and didn’t much like the hub and there was a lot going on and I was trying to balance it. I wasn’t playing the footy I needed to and I had probably let a couple of things in my game slip and I was focusing on the wrong things.
“In a way I was probably trying to be a bit too perfect. I think perfectionism can get you a certain way to becoming a good player but I was putting so much emphasis on every contest being exactly right and I was worse off for that. I need to put my hand up and acknowledge I wasn’t playing great footy at the time and then midway through the year I did my knee.”
Brown kicked eight goals in nine games before being shut down in Round 10, and as the Roos saw weaknesses in his game style they dragged a lucrative long-term deal off the table.
By his exit meeting, it was clear a North Melbourne side keen to build a contested brand involving down-the-line marking instead of Brown’s precise lead-and-mark play just didn’t want him any more.
“I walked into the exit meeting and Brady Rawlings and Rhyce Shaw basically told me we appreciate all you have done for the club, but it’s about time you probably looked at other opportunities. I had known there was a fair bit of change coming but the finality of it was a bit of a blow. I felt like I had put so much time into North Melbourne and I only have extremely fond memories of the place, but the finality was hard.”
Was he offended that the Roos had so quickly lost faith despite all he had achieved?
“Um, yeah, I have always had a fair bit of faith in myself. It was probably questioned a fair bit last year from a personal point of view. I probably had that challenged internally. But as much as anything, I see that time in my life as a positive thing in terms of where I am now.”
SIMON GOODWIN’S PITCH
Brown was linked with Essendon, Fremantle and Melbourne in the off-season but he says Simon Goodwin’s vision for the Demons won out.
The Demons had again failed to make finals but after a 6-3 finish to the season, Goodwin was able to make Brown believe they had the potential for greatness in them.
“My manager Adam Ramanauskas was great in helping me through the process and coming to the decision I did, but Melbourne right from the start stood out in terms of their presentation to me. I had a little walk near my place with Goody early in the piece and everything he said just sounded so positive. He could see a role for me but he was also really bullish about having the list and game plan to take them deep into the finals. I got really excited straight away about what would happen this year.”
He would secure the four-year deal that would give him security but quickly he realised he had plenty of work to do.
“Coming into my first day of pre-season I was struck by how hard these guys trained. Just how professional the club was and how I had some work to do in terms of playing catch-up.
“It was just the amount of guys who were pretty incredible runners.”
Brown has regularly cranked out 16km games despite his stature but he says the Demons were different.
“I am definitely a bit of a plodder but I did some running before we started the pre-season with Tom McDonald, who is just an outstanding runner, and Adam Tomlinson, and they are big guys that could really run. I thought, “Yep, this is going to be great for me, this will push me along. I have got some work to do. I am not a walk-up start at this club and it was clear to me I needed to up my game.”
A BITTERSWEET MOMENT
Second daughter Esme Elizabeth was born in the first week of February to complete the family along with two-year-old Aila.
Yet the couple had gone public with the loss through miscarriage of a second twin, determined to help others in the same situation through their grief.
“It was a very emotional situation in a lot of ways with a vanishing twin,” Brown says of the term for the loss of one twin in a pregnancy.
“The twin we lost was lost early in the pregnancy and it’s coming out more as people have started to have ultrasound scans earlier on. It wasn’t picked up so much when people didn’t get early scans. My mum said when she had me her first scan was 20 weeks.
“It was really emotional because we have one very healthy child but it was also important to mourn the loss of what could have been. It was a lot to process at the time and a lot to process for Hester but we are really lucky to have two happy, healthy kids.”
THE ROAD BACK TO SENIOR FOOTBALL
If Melbourne has lived up to its end of the bargain after its pre-season promises, he has had to change his own one-dimensional style of play to get with the program.
“In the second half of the year it has been about knowing what I do really well and bringing it to the table but also doing the things for the team that I don’t do well. I have put a lot of effort into that. I have backed my strengths but at Melbourne there are things that are non-negotiables you have to do to play in the senior team. I have got that balance right of backing myself in and doing what is required of me. I am a two-metre guy and not the quickest out there so things like chasing and tackling don’t necessarily come first-nature to me but they are required and you have got to do them.
“The coaches have been great for me in challenging me to get better as well as backing in those strengths. Those non-negotiables are highlighted in meetings.
“On the weekend I took a contested mark inside 50 and it came up at the meeting that Tom McDonald had blocked Harris Andrews for me and I hadn’t noticed. They are the little things that matter.”
A GRAND OLD FLAG
Brown cannot help but dream about what might be around the corner if everything clicks for Melbourne, even as he knows he cannot cast his mind too far ahead.
What sustains him is the belief Melbourne’s best is clearly good enough.
Now the Demons need to deliver that against Geelong, just as they did in that Brisbane demolition.
“It’s hard not to think about it,” he says of that elusive premiership.
“But each new training session and each new game is an opportunity to play the way we want as a team and that’s my focus as well. I feel like I am at a point where I am really confident in my game, where I am feeling a lot like myself out on the field.
“We know how important it was to win that first final but the next game is the toughest of the year so far. We had a few days where we didn’t really think about football but after our main session (on Friday) we are right back into footy mode. This is what we have prepared for all year, right from the start of the year we wanted to play a game style that would stack up in big finals so each week we have been building towards that. We know next week is our biggest challenge but we are really excited by it.”
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