Mar 17th, 2019

Mar 17th, 2019

PAUL GALLEN writes exclusively for Wide World of Sports, responding to comments from Newcastle Knights coach Nathan Brown. Watch the Cronulla Sharks captain on 100% Footy tonight, 10pm (AEDT) on Channel Nine for more!

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Overall, a great first round with some memorable performances. Jesse Bromwich's 35-metre try, Robbie Farah turning back the clock and Jason Taumalolo with one of the greatest games I’ve seen in round one.

How much better can he get? We’ll go through it all tonight on 100% Footy.

Off the back of a Round 1 win, I thought that Nathan Brown referring back to comments I made 18 months ago was surprising.

He’s a head coach and chose a press conference to pull apart comments I made 18 months ago. I didn’t realise Browny valued my opinion that much.

He had his team’s 80 per cent completion rate to speak about, the way the Knights hung in there the whole game, David Klemmer’s strong first performance for the club. They had 21,000 fans there.

I’m sure Knights fans would prefer to hear from their coach about their team, rather than his trip down memory lane.

What I said back in 2017 was that Newcastle were two-to-three years away from being a consistent top-eight side, a long way off winning a competition, and that Mitchell Pearce was taking a risk by signing with them over the Sharks.

Those comments were made with Newcastle coming off three consecutive wooden spoons. They were pretty fair.

Nathan Brown and Paul Gallen. (Getty)

Since then, Browny has signed some pretty good players: Pearcey, Kalyn Ponga, Aidan Guerra, Connor Watson, Chris Heighington, Tautau Moga and Shaun Kenny-Dowall for 2018. We played them twice last year, beat them both times, and not once did I ever come out and question his team. No condescending comments, nothing like that whatsoever.

This year, he’s signed David Klemmer, Tim Glasby, James Gavet, Jesse Ramien, Edrick Lee and Kurt Mann. They’re just the guys I can name, plus their younger players have another season under their belts. We played them in a trial a couple of weeks ago and the first thing I said after I came off the field was, ‘They are going to be a much different team Round 1. They’re going to be right on.’

My comments of 18 months ago are looking pretty spot on. I actually picked Newcastle to make the eight this year. Go back and watch Sports Sunday from a couple of weeks ago.

If Browny is that interested in my opinion: I think they should make the eight with this Knights team. It’s a fair squad he’s got.

If they don’t, it would be a major disappointment for the club, the coach and a proud rugby league town.

David Klemmer is another big-name signing for Nathan Brown's Knights, who should make the finals. (Getty)

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As for the Sharks, our performance against Newcastle wasn’t great. Not at all.

We’ve got a lot of improvement there, especially with a completion rate of about 63 per cent; you’re not going to win games with that. I came up with a crucial error. It’s not a game I want to remember, personally or as a team.

Maybe that’s where Browny was going: he just wanted to remind me that I dropped the ball at a crucial time!

I can be honest and fair in assessment of my own game: it wasn’t my best. I’m my own worst critic.

That game was probably a sign as to where my last year lies, as far as minutes go. The days of playing 60-80 minutes are gone. I think I’ll play about 40-50 minutes and that’ll be about it this year, which is fine by me.

I'll be playing reduced minutes this season, which is fine by me. (Getty)

We’re in the process of integrating Shaun Johnson into the team, alongside Chad Townsend and Matt Moylan, and there were definitely positives in our attack. I can remember about four clean line breaks that we made.

The only line break Newcastle made was off a bad defensive read by us, which was pretty uncharacteristic. Even with our poor completion rate, we were in it with five minutes to go and only got beaten by an intercept.

It’s not the end of the world. We can’t wait to get back to Shark Park for our first home game versus the Titans, at 3pm on Saturday.

Shaun Johnson will be a good buy for the Sharks. (AAP)

Johnson has shown me that he’s got both the talent and the desire to succeed at Cronulla - and on top of that, he’s just an all-round nice bloke! He’s been good for us.

He’s come out of pre-season well despite only playing 40 minutes in a trial for us; a great 40 minutes against Newcastle. Now he’s just got to find his feet in the NRL for us.

He was all right on the weekend; it’s a bit hard for that halves if you’re not controlling the ball and field position. I’m confident he’ll be a good buy