WARRIORS coach Nathan Brown has accepted Friday night's 20-16 loss to the Newcastle Knights with good grace, admitting he liked what he saw from his former club.
Brown coached Newcastle in 94 NRL games between 2016 and 2019, and 14 of Newcastle's 17-man squad who played on Friday night were either recruited on his watch or emerged from the club's development system.
After Friday's cliffhanger in Gosford, Brown noted their all-round improvement, in particular dynamic centre Bradman Best, whose NRL debut for Newcastle in 2019 proved to be Brown's last game at the helm.
"I hope the Knights do well," Brown said after his first game coaching against his former charges.
"I was there for nearly four years and people like [Daniel and Jacob Saifiti] and Mitch Barnett, those three blokes played in the hardest time of any kids that I've seen play first grade, when the Knights basically had a reserve-grade side and those kids were playing first grade.
"I remember telling them: 'First grade is actually a lot easier than what you blokes are going through'.
"They were always going to become good players.
"[Mitchell Pearce] took a big chance coming to the Knights, so you want to see those boys have success. They're good boys.
"What's rugby league if Newcastle don't have a good footy team?"
What's rugby league if Newcastle don't have a good footy team?
NATHAN BROWN
Brown wasn't disappointed with the effort his troops produced on Friday night, after they fought back from an eight-point deficit to lead 16-14, but he acknowledged that the Knights were more clinical when it counted.
"The guys should get some belief that there's a footy team in us somewhere," he added.
"We've still got a bit of work to do on combinations and learning about each other.
"The Knights are a top-eight team. I think we're all expecting them to be there again at the end of the year.
"Their squad's improved on last year and we went three tries all with them.
"We feel we've got a fair bit of upside in us."
Brown's successor, Adam O'Brien, has now steered the Knights to consecutive wins to open the season for the second year in a row, despite the absence of injured regulars Kalyn Ponga, Blake Green, Kurt Mann, Edrick Lee and Lachlan Fitzgibbon.
"We're not the finished product," O'Brien said.
"We've got a lot of quality to come back. We've got five guys missing from this team that would make the 17.
"There are some guys to come back but what we've got in there is a young group who are hungry to keep fighting every day."
The Knights will be aiming to keep their unbeaten record intact when they host Wests Tigers on Sunday.
