Mike Brown’s epic message after man of the match Leicester Tigers debut
When England veteran Ben Youngs is one of the ‘younger’ players in a back line, you know that quite a unique selection has taken place, but his former England, and now Leicester Tigers, teammate Mike Brown has hit back at people writing off older players.
The former England fullback made his Leicester debut on Sunday against Saracens after almost a year out of action after being released from Newcastle Falcons, and marked his return with a try-scoring, man of the match display against the Gallagher Premiership leaders at Welford Road.
The 37-year-old was not even the oldest player in the back line, that was 39-year-old centre Jimmy Gopperth, who, alongside 35-year-old Chris Ashton formed an experienced squad. But Brown hit back at his critics in his post match interview, highlighting the amount of work he has put in to remain in the game in his late thirties.
He said: “Do you know what, for athletes now there are so many across all sports that I could name- Thiago Silva, [James] Roby in rugby league, Lebron James, Tom Brady that are still doing it at an age because we look after ourselves. We’ve been professional throughout our careers and it has paid dividends at the end of our careers.
“It’s tough sometimes, people will use age as an excuse to write you off and it is like they are desperate for you to give up and crawl away and die somewhere. But we work unbelievably hard, people don’t see what we do behind closed doors, they don’t see what we go through and what our families go through to allow us to do what we do every day. Every single day that is as well, we don’t just turn up and have a jolly with our mates. We work incredibly hard to stay up at the top of our game. So it’s good to remind people sometimes and show that I’ve been out of the game for a bit -Jimmy [Gopperth] hasn’t- but we can still do it in the top league in the world, in my opinion.”
Watch the interview here:
An emotional @mikebrown_15 speaks following a player of the match performance in his first game back 👏#GallagherPrem pic.twitter.com/AHjHHvgM6P
— Rugby on BT Sport (@btsportrugby) February 19, 2023
