NRL: Knights coach explains ducking of Dylan Brown questions
Newcastle Knights coach Adam O’Brien explained on Thursday why he avoided speaking about his club’s signing of Dylan Brown earlier in the week.
News of the Brown move broke on Monday, with the 24-year-old playmaker inking a 10-year, $13 million deal that is the biggest in NRL history.
However, when questioned about it ahead of Newcastle’s clash with the Dolphins, O’Brien stone-walled reporters and refused to discuss the matter.
Now, the coach has revealed that he did so to keep focus on the club’s upcoming game.
“That’s what the whole thing was about,” he said after the Knights’ game on Thursday evening.
“I was copping a little bit for not talking about Dylan Brown, but my number one job yesterday was to not talk about next year when these guys are 24 hours out from playing.
“I apologise if the media felt disrespected.
“I don’t want to make your job harder, I know it is your job to report on news and it is newsworthy. I get it.
“But what might have come across as being disrespectful was coming from a place of respect.
“I was respecting the process of a 10-day cooling-off period, I was respecting Parramatta.
“The last thing Parramatta want me doing during that period is talk about how we’re going to play their player.
“There’ll be a point in time where we’ll need to talk about Dylan but yesterday wasn’t that.”
The Knights kicked off Round 2 in style, beating the Dolphins 26-12 at McDonald Jones Stadium after entering the clash as $1.55 favourites at Neds.
Their odds to win the 2025 NRL Premiership remain long, however, with Australian bookmakers pricing them at $41.
O’Brien assured Knights fans that his focus remains on performing in 2025 — not looking ahead to the following season when Brown joins.
“I know the red and blue army,” he said.
“I know them pretty well, they’d be really disappointed if I was talking about next year when we had a game tonight.
“They’ve been through all that stuff before, they don’t want to hear about rebuilds and all of that stuff.
“They want to win now and so do we and I want to make sure we’re doing our best to do that.
“That’s the reason for not commenting yesterday.
“I probably didn’t handle it well by straight-batting it and I apologise for that but I don’t apologise for shifting focus on what was the most important thing for us: tonight.
“We met with Dylan, he knows how I feel about him and he’s got a good understanding of how we’ll play him.
“But his priority is Parramatta right now and ours is that current group that are in there now.”