When Mike Brown played for Harlequins, he described the fixture against Saracens as our “biggest grudge match”. He circled it in the diary. It fired him up like no other.
On Saturday, the clubs meet at the StoneX. You would not know it from Brown’s calendar. “They’re playing when?” England’s most-capped full-back asked. “This weekend, is it?”
Of all the signs of decline at Quins, few should worry supporters of the club more than Brown’s disengagement. During 17 years at the Stoop, nobody cared more for the club.
He wore the quarters on his front and back, and his heart on his sleeve.
A relationship severed
Brown is now Sporting Director at Esher, a rugby club less than 10 miles from the Stoop, plying its trade in the fourth tier of the English league pyramid.
The man who made 382 appearances for Quins, winning two Premiership titles and epitomising the champion quality in the team at the time, no longer has a relationship with the club.
Despite racking up 281 Premiership matches, a number bettered only by Richard Wigglesworth and Danny Care in the history of what is now known as the Gallagher PREM, he is on the outside looking in.
“There are certain individuals who are still there that mean I’ve not got a relationship with that great club,” he tells Planet Rugby bluntly. “It feels I’ve kind of been blacklisted, which is a shame.
“It feels, without getting into too much detail, I’ve been erased from the place.”
In recent months, Brown has put a couple of posts on LinkedIn which have laid bare his frustration at the plight of his former club, who lie third from bottom, a massive 29 points outside the play-off places.
In the first, he spoke, “not as an angry fan, but as someone who came through the academy & lived this club for nearly 18 years”.
He explained how much the club still meant to him and said it hurt watching it “drift without clear direction”.
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“This is not about blame. It’s about taking responsibility”
He said it had been coming for a while and that winning the PREM against all the odds in 2021 was, “in a strange way, the worst thing that happened as it papered over the cracks.
“Individuals thought they’d cracked it & an unsustainable environment [was] created.”
Being a passionate man and a deep thinker on the game, he did not stop there. He alleged no clear ownership of direction from the top, saying everything feels reactive, sticky plasters over deeper problems.
He called for the appointment of a Sporting Director, general manager or director of rugby to set a clear vision, asking: “Do we want to win or just entertain?”
He sought real accountability, honest conversations and no hiding. A rebuilding of the fight, edge and standards. And making the academy the heartbeat of the club again.
“High performance always starts at the top. This is not about blame. It’s about taking responsibility.”
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Too many cooks spoil the broth
His second post voiced concern over clarity, suggesting there were too many coaching/management roles. It also questioned the wisdom of appointing a performance director (Robbie Deans) who will spend much of the year working remotely from New Zealand.
Mid-season, he reached out to the club, offering his support in whatever capacity might add value; no agenda, he insists, other than a desire to help. Nothing materialised from the offer.
“It’s frustrating,” he says. “And part of me not having the relationship I’d love to have there is me vocalising that. And getting a bit of backlash about that.
“A number of things I put out there didn’t land very well. Maybe a few of them hit home. But let’s go through it, talk about it.
“They don’t seem to want to ask why people like myself, or Danny [Care] and Ugo [Monye] on TV, are saying what we are. To actually sit down and go through the points.
“Instead, they’re happy to go and get a part-time consultant from the other side of the world who’s never experienced Quins or the Premiership.
“It’s upsetting for me, and while I still believe at some point I will end up there, I’m at a point where I’ve gone from wanting to be involved in some capacity to getting on with doing my own thing.
“If they take offence to a small LinkedIn post, I’m like, ‘Wow. Okay, there’s definitely an issue there, so let’s just leave it’.”
Brown adds: “I still feel connected to the supporters and have huge respect for owners Charles [Jillings] and Duncan [Saville] but in terms of the club as a whole there’s nothing there at the moment.
“I don’t want to be dragged into how I felt when I left, which was a dark, dark place. I’m not going back to that.
“I’m very happy to continue the pathway I’m on and, hopefully, at some point, it will take me back there.”
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“It wasn’t the level of rugby – that I envisaged getting into”
So it is that Brown is found on days like this, manning the phones. Esher missed the relegation play-off by a single point in National League 2 East after beating Sevenoaks in their final game.
It was way too close for comfort, and the man who took charge mid-season is bent on assuring he has a stronger squad to guard against any repeat.
In some ways, I almost think this level is harder than elite sport,” he says. “You don’t have the access to people, you don’t have the budgets. I’m having to use WhatsApp and try to phone people when they’re doing full-time jobs.
“If I think of something, I can’t just go see a player, pull a coach to one side or grab someone from the other side of the room. I’m having to wait to speak to them at training on Tuesday or Thursday evening.
“If I’m honest, when this opportunity came up I wasn’t sure, having just finished playing, I wanted to give up my Saturdays. It wasn’t the level of rugby, without being disrespectful, that I envisaged getting into.
“Professional rugby is what I’ve known for 21 years, it’s what I’ve been motivated by, and I was so keen to get back there. But my wife was like, ‘Why are you being stupid? This is what you’ve been working hard for with your masters, this is what you’ve been trying to get work experience-wise.
“‘You’ve now got a chance to put your money where your mouth is and put some things into action and do what you’ve always wanted to do. It doesn’t matter what level you’re doing it at’.
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“I’m not trying to do anything but my best”
Not for the first time, Eliza called it right, and her husband has not looked back. “At the time, I only had in my mind getting into elite sport. I felt I could do a good job there,” he says.
“But on reflection now, I’m seeing this is as a great learning experience. It’s supposed to be part-time, but it never is; partly because there’s a lot to sort out, partly because of the way I am.
“It’s a role I’d always been looking at, and now I’m in it, I’m really enjoying it. I think sometimes people in elite sport lean on data too heavily, which is quite a lazy way sometimes.
“You don’t have the data at this level. It’s about people management, understanding people’s behaviour: how to motivate, how to get the best out of them, connecting on a genuine, authentic level, not just on a rugby level.
“You can’t lean on data to say, ‘oh, this person must be feeling this’, you have to go and find out. People are very complex at times. I’m learning all about that. And loving it.
“I’m super ambitious, super driven to get this club promoted as quick as possible. I’m also driven in terms of my own career.
“But I don’t think about that every day. I’m thinking what I need to do for this club.
“I’m not trying to sell myself for any other role, Quins or anywhere else, I’m not trying to do anything but my best for Esher.”
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