Rising Penrith star Brent Naden confirms he nearly quit the game amid struggles to establish himself
Last year, Brent Naden thought he was finished in rugby league but with a new attitude and a growing reputation, the Penrith rookie won’t let this opportunity slip through his fingers.
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Brent Naden quit the Penrith Panthers last year and still nobody knows about it.
Not coach Ivan Cleary.
Nor then GM Phil Gould.
“No, you’re the only person I’ve told,” Naden says sheepishly.
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“Well, you, my mum and nan … but nobody else knows I was quitting.”
Yet quit, this Wellington boy did.
One morning last May, Naden rang home to tell mum Julie how he was walking out on the meagre $15,000 contract that saw him in reserves, on the wing and laying NBN cable between training sessions.
Not simply out of favour with his third club in as many years, but “finished” as he recalls it.
Which isn’t how life was supposed to go for this hyped Panthers prodigy.
A livewire Wellington schoolboy who, plucked in his early teens from a lifestyle of riding horses, mustering sheep and generally “working in dust”, then went and captained Penrith to the 2015 NYC premiership, leading a side boasting Nathan Cleary, Jarome Luai and James Fisher-Harris.
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Back then, Naden was all the rage. Generation Next.
A rising indigenous centre who early on, and despite ongoing bouts of homesickness, quietly struggled through without his family, his horses, even that favoured swimming hole down the back of nan and pop’s place.
“Every weekend, I’d phone my grandparents to tell them I was coming home,” the 24-year-old recalls.
“And every weekend, they’d get into me — especially Nan.
“I’d tell her I wanted out and she would hang up on me. Wouldn’t answer when I rang back, either.
“For a long time down in Sydney, I felt trapped. But my nan, she wasn’t about to let me quit. So I stayed.”
Not anymore, though.
No, on this particular morning last May, Naden phoned home to mum, then nan Monica, explaining how he was playing one more game for the Panthers’ NSW Cup that Sunday — then out.
Headed back home, he said, for life working as a farmhand and playing weekends with the Wellington Cowboys.
“And when I told Nan, she just said she’d love me no matter what,” Naden says. “I thought ‘well, that’s good enough for me’.
“When we trained that Saturday morning, I was going to tell the club my dream of playing NRL was done.”
Seated now inside a small Penrith cafe, Naden is opening up about what has to be — outside, maybe, Parramatta’s Fijian flyer Maika Sivo — the most unlikely rookie story of the 2019 NRL season.
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Understanding how only months before last season began, Naden wasn’t even at Penrith, but back home in Wellington, living with his oldies and mending fences after failed stints with the Panthers, Canberra and Newcastle.
Then even when Naden was signed, it was only part-time deal worth $15,000.
So star in first grade?
No, even as the Panthers lurched through an injury crisis that would eventually see coach Ivan Cleary churn through 33 players, including 11 rookies, nobody was thinking too much about this kid who was overweight, digging ditches for NBN cable and “hearing nothing about a new deal”.
Which is why the morning his first grade debut was finally announced, Naden had already quit. Not that anybody knows.
“But that Saturday morning I rocked up for what was supposed to be my last NSW Cup training run,” recounts the fella who now boasts a dozen NRL games.
“I was there to say I was quitting.
“But as I walked in, our coach, Guy Missio, says ‘Nado, you aren’t playing for us tomorrow … you’re training with first grade’.”
Really?
“Yep,” Naden continues.
“It’s amazing to think how life can change in a moment.”
So as for what happened when coach Cleary, a day later, finally confirmed the news?
“Ran straight into the sheds and rang Nan, then Mum,” he recalls. “I started crying and couldn’t stop.
“Eventually I had to take my phone outside, away from the boys … I cried for about 45 minutes.”
Still, please don’t mistake this for a story about luck.
Not when you learn how since hoisting that Holden Cup trophy aloft in 2015, Naden spent the next three years moving through as many clubs before eventually finding himself back home and living with the oldies in Wellington, unwanted and mending fences on neighbouring farms.
So convinced the NRL dream was over, he only accepted a train-and-trial offer from Penrith because the club had signed his younger brother, Brock.
“And I didn’t want my little brother living in Sydney alone,” Naden says.
“So when Brock earned a trial, I came along too knowing how hard it can be for bush boys in Sydney. But I was never planning to stay.
“I was going to train for eight weeks, see my brother signed, then head back home.”
Yet in another incredible twist, it was Brock who eventually headed back west with homesickness while big brother stayed, signed on for $15,000 and eventually exploded among the rookie stars of 2019.
“And seeing so many family and friends at the ground for my debut game,” Naden recounts of the Round 12 match against Manly, “seeing how proud they were when I ran out … those images are now my motivation.”
Which is why, only days out from the season opener, we can tell you Naden has not only lost five kilos, but by his own admission, the troublesome attitude which had increasingly engulfed his thoughts since 2016 — when initially punted from Penrith by coach Anthony Griffin.
“Getting let go by Panthers, it was a rude shock,” Naden recalls. “That year, I’d only just made the NRL squad.
“Then this one day, (Griffin) calls me into his office saying I was being dropped to a part-time contract because there were so many other centres in front of me.
“I was 19, a kid. And I just didn’t handle that.”
So instead, Naden shifted to the Canberra Raiders, then Newcastle Knights.
“But I kept playing the blame game,” Naden concedes.
“I don’t want to sound like too much of a gronk, but I blamed everyone else for what was happening to me.
“I just couldn’t get over the fact I was dropped from Penrith, so I sulked, and sulked, and sulked.
“I was eating shit, drinking more than I should’ve been and generally had no respect for the position I was in.”
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But now?
“Now I understand what a privilege this is,” Naden says.
“Understand the effort required to be here, too.
“And whatever footy I have in me, I want to drain it all out in the NRL.
“Not only for me, but to show other bush kids what can happen by hanging in. Prove that if I can make it, why not them?
“Because really, I’m still just a country boy trying to survive in the city.”
Originally published as Rising Penrith star Brent Naden confirms he nearly quit the game amid struggles to establish himself
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