The story behind Nathan Brown’s gruesome broken legMatthew Richardson
Herald-Sun
May 08, 2015 10:07AMBACK in 2005, in Terry Wallace’s first season at Richmond, we were sitting 7-2 after round nine.
We’d had a really good start to the year under a new coach, there was a real buzz around the place and after a four-point win at the Gabba against a Brisbane team that had made the past four grand finals everyone was feeling really confident.
On the Sunday after that Brisbane game, myself and Nathan Brown went down to the Railway Hotel in South Melbourne to have a few beers.
We probably shouldn’t have been doing that given there was a six-day turnaround to our next game but we’d both been playing really well — or so we kept telling ourselves. He’d kicked 32 goals for the season — including 19 during the four game winning streak we were on — and I’d kicked 27. You could not have seen two blokes happier with themselves.
Our form together in the forward line prompted the guys at Inside Football to put us on the front cover dubbing us Batman and Robin. We were pretty happy with the reference and really began hamming it up in front of our teammates at the pub that day. I was telling Browny he was going to win the Brownlow Medal and he was telling me I’d win the Coleman. We could see our teammates having a laugh but they were also cringing a little bit as well.
I distinctly remember leaving the pub together and while we were walking it was just ridiculous how much we were pumping each other up. We started talking premierships — it was a little bit tongue-in-cheek but we were half serious as well.
We entered that next game — a Friday night footy fixture against Melbourne — expecting to have another win and to move to 8-2.
But as most footy fans will know that was the night Matthew Whelan fell across Browny’s right leg while he was having a kick for goal and snapped it in one of the worst injuries seen in the AFL.
I had a stinker, we were smashed by 57 points and after losing our most influential player proceeded to win only three more games for the year.
Browny and I have often sat around and talked about how that was the footy gods really coming down heavily on us for reading our own press. It’d been building in the weeks leading up to the Brisbane game but that was when it really hit a crescendo and the footy gods thought, “Right, we’ve had enough of you two.”
It’s for reasons like this you won’t see any Collingwood or Western Bulldogs players getting too carried away with their 4-1 starts to the season.
They’ve both got quality leaders in charge in Rob Murphy and Scott Pendlebury as well who will make sure they keep a lid on things.
It’s great to see two young teams really defying the preseason predictions to sit second and third on the ladder but you won’t hear individuals within that team getting ahead of themselves.
There’s a reason we don’t mention the “F” word in football and talk in cliches like “one week at a time”.
There’s a paranoia that accompanies success at an AFL club. After the Bulldogs win against Sydney on Saturday we asked Rob Murphy on the radio if his team could celebrate the victory and he noted there is that paranoia. You can enjoy the win when you’re singing the club song but you’ve got to knuckle down again straight after.
The reason? The footy gods are always watching.
The other interesting footnote to that night in 2005 was we were all wearing black armbands because a close relative of someone who worked at the football club had passed away that week. For whatever reason Browny — he must have been distracted getting ready in the changerooms — forgot to put his black armband on. He was the only one who didn’t put one on.
http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/the-story-behind-nathan-browns-gruesome-broken-leg/story-fndv7pj3-1227346177821
