Ben Brown Biography

Ben Brown chops off his famous curly locks to raise important funds for Challenge, a not-for-profit organisation that supports families and children living with cancer.

Challenge is a charity close to Brown's heart, with his 17-year-old cousin Grace having been supported by the organisation during her long-term leukaemia battle.

Ben Brown will miss at least a month of training after undergoing surgery on his troublesome left knee.

"Given Ben's knee history we will be taking a conservative approach to his recovery," Melbourne's football boss Alan Richardson said.

"We anticipate Ben will be in a position to commence running four weeks following surgery."

North Melbourne officially trades Ben Brown to Melbourne. The Roos receive picks No.26, No.33, and a future fourth-round selection (tied to Brisbane), while giving the Dees pick 28 and their future fourth-round selection.

"He is a proven goal kicker and we think he is the perfect type of player to work alongside our other forwards with his height, football smarts and experience," Melbourne general manager of football Josh Mahoney said.

"We were impressed during this process by Ben's determination to succeed and also his excitement about joining Melbourne and being part of our club."

Ben Brown requests a trade to Melbourne.

North Melbourne confirms it will look to trade Ben Brown during the upcoming AFL Trade Period.

"It's not a decision we've made lightly as Ben has been a tremendous part of our club since 2014," Roos head of football Brady Rawlings said in a statement.

"It was a very honest discussion. Ben was very mature and understood our decision. We will work with Ben and his management to secure a mutually beneficial outcome."

North Melbourne forward Ben Brown's wife Hester opens up about the loss of their unborn twin.

In a message posted on Brown's Instagram account, but in Hester's words, they announced her pregnancy but that she would welcome only one of her twins into the world.

Ben Brown, Darcy Moore, Easton Wood and Adam Saad are among the group of players whose contract discussions have been paused indefinitely due to the escalating coronavirus crisis that has led to the suspension of the 2020 AFL season.

The AFL Live Official App's Telstra Tracker shows Ben Brown as being the player who leads the way across the competition for the highest average distance covered in 2020 with an average of 15.6km per match.

Ben Brown takes the lead in the Coleman Medal after kicking ten goals against Port Adelaide as part of North Melbourne's 86-point thrashing of the Power.

Brad Scott jumped to the defence of Ben Brown after he came under fire from Brendon Goddard over claims of flopping and staging for free kicks.

"Ben Brown, just stand up and play like a man. Why are the umpires buying into that? Make a stand and say, 'Ben that's not acceptable – stop staging or flopping for free kicks'," Goddard said on ABC radio.

Scott took exception to the nature of Goddard's comments.

"Ben Brown is a man of the highest integrity, who launches at the ball wherever possible," Scott said.

"He does get a lot of free kicks but most of them are there, and if you analyse the behind-the-goal vision there's a lot more there too."

Former North Melbourne great Wayne Carey is scathing of Ben Brown following the Kangaroos' disastrous start to the 2019 season.

"He's never laid a tackle because he can't, he's not nimble enough," Carey said of Brown.

"Ben Brown has to look at himself in the mirror and ask himself whether he wants to be a star of this competition or one-dimensional.

"If he doesn't mark it, he's deemed useless - he has to get a couple of other tricks up his sleeve."

Ben Brown says he won't train fully until after Christmas due to a lengthy recovery from post-season hip surgery.

"I'll be limited in the first stages of pre-season but I've done that most pre-seasons so far, so I'm not too concerned about where that's going to leave me," Brown said.

"I'll probably be limited up until Christmas but in January when we come back I should be fit and firing and well and truly right by round one."

Jack Riewoldt becomes the first Richmond player to claim three Coleman Medals after North Melbourne's Ben Brown couldn't overtake the Tigers spearhead in the last game of the 2018 regular season.

Brown, who led the race for the Coleman for much of the year, needed to boot seven goals in the Kangaroos' round 23 clash with St Kilda to draw level with Riewoldt.

But he could only manage three to finish second.

North Melbourne coach Brad Scott praises Ben Brown after the key forward kicked five goals in the Kangaroos' 86-point thumping of Carlton.

"Browny is becoming a pretty complete player," Scott said.

"There probably would have been a time a couple of years ago we might have left him out purely because it wouldn't have been the kind of day for 200cm forwards. He's impacting regardless of the conditions now.

"He’s like all the good players, you'd like to have two or three of them."

Ben Brown has no doubt teammate and prized recruit Luke Davies-Uniacke is ready to debut for North Melbourne in round one.

"I think he's got the class that we want through the midfield," Brown said.

"Not many kids who come in as an 18-year-old can go straight into a midfield that's been pretty settled for a fair while and really shake that (group up), but I think he has.

"But the expectations on him from our perspective aren't too high. We're really conscious of that.

"We just want to make sure that Luke's enjoying his footy. He's an 18-year-old who's come in and, just like anyone, come his first game – whenever that is – he's going to have nerves. So we've got to make sure that he's feeling really comfortable for that."

Ben Brown ended his Icelandic honeymoon early when the Australian selectors came calling for the Virgin Australia International Rules Series.

"I got the message about 10 days ago about midway through my honeymoon when I was in Iceland," Brown said.

"My partner, Hester, she's very supportive, straight away she was on the Flight Centre website trying to figure out how we were going to get home.

"We might have to go on another holiday at some point just to make up for it."

Ben Brown, Robbie Tarrant, Jack Gunston, Neville Jetta, Luke Shuey and Kade Simpson are new additions to the squad who will represent Australia in the International Rules Series.

Ben Brown signs a two-year contract extension with North Melbourne to remain at the club until the end of 2018.

"North was really keen to keep me on and I was really keen to stay," Brown said.

"There was a lot of external noise but I never really considered (leaving). I'm really happy at North Melbourne and I'm really looking forward to staying around for a few more years."

North Melbourne coach Brad Scott says Ben Brown's full potential is yet to be realized after the key forward finished the 2017 season with 63 goals.

"Such an accurate set shot, we might have to do a bit of work on his kicking on the run," Scott said with a wry grin.

"He's always had capability, marking at full stretch and all those things, but he had some deficiencies he had to work on.

"It just gives me great hope for Ben that he's scratching the surface on how good he can be, because the things we've given him to work on and been coaching him on, he's dramatically improved."

Ben Brown says he actually feels sorry for Brodie Grundy in the wake of the Magpie ruckman's tackle that left him concussed.

"He sent me a text and that was really nice to see from him, and I think he was really remorseful afterwards," Brown said.

"I've seen a little bit of the vision of what he had to say and I kind of feel bad for him as well because these kind of decisions are really split-second ones in games, so I hope he's feeling all right as well.

"I've looked back at it and it didn't look like Brodie was trying to hurt me in any way. It's always difficult when you're in those situations because we are taught to tackle to pin the arms and to try to get a guy to ground.

"So I can appreciate that it was a really split-second decision and I obviously don't have any hard feelings towards him."

Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley says Brodie Grundy's tackle that hospitalised North Melbourne star Ben Brown with concussion was completely legal.

"It was a perfect tackle," Buckley said.

"I don't think there was any malice in the tackle. He was tackling to dispossess, tackling to get the free kick the way the rules are written. So what more do you do?

"Clearly when you're tackling someone from behind with momentum, there's going to be a little bit of carry (forward effect). It's pretty hard to put yourself in reverse when you've got no friction to do it."

Ben Brown is hospitalised with concussion after a tackle by Magpie Brodie Grundy.

Brown had his arms pinned by Grundy in the tackle, with his head smacking into the Etihad Stadium turf.

After lying motionless for about a minute, Brown tried to get up, rolling onto his back but was unable to steady himself.

North Melbourne trainers and medical staff hurried to his side, stabilising his neck with a brace immediately.

Brown was eventually taken off on a stretcher, giving Roos fans a thumbs up as he was carted off into the rooms.

"There was no malicious intent, that's not the player that I am," a remorseful Grundy said.

"I felt pretty shaken up after it happened. I was pretty glad they stopped play because I didn't know what to do. It's terrible that he's gone to hospital so I'll definitely reach out to him tonight."

North Melbourne coach Brad Scott praises Ben Brown for his defensive improvement in the Kangaroos' forward line.

"He's transformed himself from being a forward who would try to pressure and try to defend his best, to now someone who is actually an asset to the way we defend in our forward line," Scott said.

"The defensive side of his game and improvement there probably won't be noted as much as the goals he's kicking, but it's certainly noted internally."

Ben Brown is running out of time to prove his fitness for round one as he continues to recover from knee surgery.

"The doctors are still working through whether I can get up for that game but I'm aiming for it and I'm doing as much as I can in my rehab work," Brown said.

"My running's going really well and the main thing for me is my body's feeling really good, so when I do get up to play, I should feel 100 per cent ready to go."

Ben Brown will miss two weeks of training after having a minor knee operation.

"In terms of seriousness, specialists feel this is at the very low end of the spectrum," North senior performance consultant Steve Saunders said.

"The procedure should maximise Ben's remaining pre-season and outcomes for his knee long-term.

"We could have managed the issue as it was without surgical intervention, but given the time to round one, we felt it was best to involve a specialist and take this course of action."

Ben Brown suffers a knee injury in the second quarter of North Melbourne's clash against the Western Bulldogs.

Brown hobbled from the field in the second term, briefly went down to the rooms and emerged only to have ice applied on the interchange bench, signalling his night was done.

North Melbourne forward-line coach Leigh Tudor praises Ben Brown.

"He's self-driven. I never have to go find him," Tudor said.

"For an assistant coach, there's a lot of different personalities in football.

"But the guys who are self-driven, when they come and get you, that's fantastic."

Ben Brown says he doesn't know what happened to his usually sticky hands during North Melbourne's 2015 finals campaign.

After averaging 4.9 marks a game in the 2015 home and away season, Brown took just six in North Melbourne's three finals, only two of them contested and only three inside forward 50.

"I don't really know what it was necessarily, but I think it's just something that I need to keep improving on and it's just (a case of) doing it over and over and over again until I take that mark every day of the week," Brown said.

"I'll back myself in to take those marks every day – that's what I pride myself on – so to not follow through with it was disappointing.

"But next year I'll keep on working on my craft and it's just something that I think will get better with repetition and working with the experienced guys in the side to make sure I'm learning off them as much as I can."

Ben Brown has been rewarded for his rapid rise at Arden Street with a two-year contract extension.

The 22-year-old, who has been a key target in attack this year, is now tied to the Kangaroos until the end of the 2018 season.

North Melbourne defender Sam Wright has heaped praise on forward Ben Brown, labeling him as the club's "barometer" for team success this season.

"He's sort of a barometer for us," Wright told Crocmedia's Sportsday.

"He gets you up and about when you see his unorthodox way of going about things I guess.

"He was really good again on the weekend, he just keeps hitting the scoreboard."

Ben Brown knows the growing competition for key-forward spots at North Melbourne means he can't take his position in attack for granted.

Brown was a late omission from the Roos' round one team after they elected to play just two key forwards, Drew Petrie and Jarrad Waite, in the belief they needed more run against Adelaide.

After North's 77-point loss to the Crows, the 22-year-old earned a recall for Sunday's round two clash against the Brisbane Lions and made the most of his opportunity, kicking 3.1 and dishing off two goal assists.

"We've had Aaron Black out of the side, Mason Wood has just come in today, there's also guys like Majak Daw and Daniel Currie bashing down the door," Brown said.

"It just means that week in, week out you've really got to focus and just try and do the things that you know are good for the team.

Ben Brown makes his AFL debut for North Melbourne at the MCG with 8 disposals (4 kicks and 4 handballs), 5 marks, a tackle, 1 hitouts and a goal in a 41-point win over Melbourne.