However, that can be said about Newcastle coach Nathan Brown’s tenure at the Knights. He’s been frank and up front in discussing his club’s situation, and reasonable in his expectations of his football team.

It’s won him a lot of admirers. It’s also why his decision to drop Nathan Ross for being equally frank and reasonable in a media interview was utterly ridiculous. 

Ross is one of the great rugby league stories. A battler who repeatedly turned lucrative “real” jobs to continue chasing his rugby league dream.

He’s been rewarded and now, at the age of 28, he wants to look after the family that has supported him and simply said, when asked, that he is entitled to market value and he may to have to look elsewhere to get it.

Brown couldn’t even say Ross’s comments were out of line or that the pitched contract figures were incorrect. He just gave a vague assertion Ross “went about things the wrong way.”

People often suggest that it’s a fear of media beat-ups that prevent players from speaking frankly but Brown’s handling of Ross is further evidence that players have just as much to fear from paranoid coaches who won’t treat them like adults.