England’s double World Cup winner Jack Brown, currently residing in Townsville, Queensland, Australia, is soon to return to England to play for his native Halifax Panthers in the Wheelchair Super League.
JACK BROWN, the winner of the first ever Wheelchair Golden Boot in 2019, has been playing for North Queensland Cowboys and working in the mines in the Sunshine State.
But what took a welder from Halifax, who had just helped England Wheelchair to win their biggest game ever, over to the other side of the world?
“I came over here in 2008 with England when we won the first World Cup,” he said. “I had a fantastic time and did so again when we were over for the Ashes Tour in 2019.
“My wife and I also visited in 2016 and when we got talking about it. Since 2008, I thought I could live over here and it was always a pipe-dream, or so I thought.
“But I’m rated as a first-class welder out in Australia and well sought after, so I knew then that we could look into it. Before we knew it, we were over here.”
Brown, a non-disabled player, got involved in wheelchair rugby league due to his younger brother Harry who is disabled. Both were playing under coach Malcolm Keilty, who helped to introduce the game to England in 2005.
The following year, Harry and Jack were both invited by Keilty to go on tour with an unofficial Great Britain side to France.
“We both played the first games and called ourselves Great Britain then, but with no real affiliation to the title,” Brown said.
“We were absolutely demolished by everybody. We’d never played the game before in our lives. Harry and I were still instinctively playing basketball and as soon as the ball comes, we’d bounce the ball and it would be a knock-on. We’d never heard of a knock-on before!”
The Brown brothers then played in the first ever wheelchair rugby league international, which was between England and France in Harrow in 2007. Jack became England international number six and his brother number ten.
“We played in those numbers, choosing them because we wanted them and that just became our default number and heritage number,” he explained.
“Wayne Boardman’s Heritage number one because he was running the team at the time. It was a big thing and he was just like, I’ll be number one, because I think he knew what was going to happen.”
“I’ve always played as number six and I was happy. My basketball number was 16 and I had to have a number between one and 10. So I had six in place of 16.
“Then came the World Cup in Australia. I was only 18 and Harry was only 14. We spent most of our time in Narrabeen at one of the grounds where the Manly Sea Eagles train.
“In the rooms that we were staying in, every morning we’d wake up, early enough for us, but already the Manly Sea Eagles (men’s players) are all out on the field and they’re pushing the biggest truck tyres that I’ve never seen the size of before in my life.
“And they were out there for hours on end. We’d go to a training session, have breakfast, come back, they’re still going. They had big telephone poles which they were just flipping over. They were certainly built differently and no wonder they play rugby league the way they do in Australia.
“I mean, I’m still scrawny but I was an even scrawnier 18-year-old then calling myself a rugby player.
“But we had a great tournament, won the World Cup and my brother scored two tries in the final.”
Harry played in two World Cups with England and both he and Jack scored tries in the 2013 World Cup Final loss to France. He then went back to Wheelchair Basketball and has now represented Great Britain in three successive Paralympic Games, winning two bronze medals and then a silver in Paris last year.
Jack stayed in the game and now, with 36 England caps, he is second only to Joe Coyd in the country’s appearance count, and fourth in the world after the joint record holders Harry Jones and Jodie Boyd-Ward.
“I love that I’ve managed to wear the England badge so many times,” he said. “It’s always a real privilege and something that started off as a means to have fun with the people I enjoy spending time with has evolved and turned into something that’s much bigger now.
“There’s some real pride behind it and there’s a lot of expectation behind it and I’m really privileged to be able to see where things have grown from.
“The last World Cup in 2022 was a building block for us. We had a tough starting game against Australia which was a bit of a slap in the face to say that we needed to turn up and we weren’t guaranteed a finals spot.
“All of the backrooms, the analytics and the statistics that we had were fantastic. We could see our errors, where we were turning the ball over, and how we were scoring tries and couldn’t argue over it.
“The courts were amazing, so smooth. We were lucky enough to get the sponsorship for the RGK wheelchairs that were all brand new. Mine does not move that fast anymore, it’s battered and bruised. The equipment really does make a difference.”
Then he emulated his younger brother by scoring two tries in an England World Cup Final win.
“It was fantastic. It was something we were building for so long, and I touched on it earlier. We were really heartbroken after the 2017 World Cup where France scored in the last minute to win. That was heartbreaking for all of us, we felt robbed, even though it wasn’t that. But it felt that way after everything we put in, how well we did and how well we executed it, we still managed to lose.
“So really the 2022 World Cup wasn’t a five-year build-up, it was a nine-year build-up. It had a lot of meaning, and especially being played in England and all of the extra stars and sparkles that went around it to make it look spectacular.”
Whilst Brown will soon be returning to England, he’s enjoyed his time playing down under.
“It’s growing so well over here,” he admits. “I’ve been training with the Cowboys in Townsville. There’s a lot of NRL teams getting on board now. There’s been the introduction of State Cups too.
“I can only speak for Queensland really, but I’m seeing all the building work being done. There’s a lot of staff in the background, the statistics, the analytics, the wellbeing offices and things like that.
“It’s just growing so well with the actual calibre of the game, and the calibre of the key players who are playing at entry level as well are just getting so good.
“The junior division down in Brisbane is out of this world. I’ve never seen so many kids involved in wheelchair and the league in one place.”
Now, Brown is returning to England for a minimum of 18 months to help England prepare for the World Cup in Australia in late 2026.
“I’m not done with my playing career yet,” he says. “Moving back to England is the best thing I can do in terms of getting prepped for the World Cup and getting back to that form that we had in in 2022.
“As awesome as the training is out here, it’s just that as a player, as an English player, I can’t contribute or play in many competitions in Australia because of eligibility reasons.
“There’s a pathway here in building the sport and unfortunately, that does rule me out because it makes more positions for Queensland representative players going through the pathway and more representation for Australia, and I’m only going to be playing for England, even though some people joke that I may defect to Australia. That’s not going to happen.
“I need to go and play with my team, Halifax Panthers, and I need to be playing competition and get myself game fit, game ready again.
“I’ve been watching all of the leagues over in Europe and everyone’s coming on so well. Teams are so strong now.
“In regards to Super League, I love the fact that we’re having different teams winning constantly, and we’ve got what Wigan did to win Super League a couple of years back. We’ll all want to take the title off Leeds.
“But you can’t come over and say that we’re going to win the Challenge Cup and the Grand Final. It’s what we’re going to aim to do, it’s what we’re going to try to do, but realistically, what we need to do is go over and start the process of work.
“I always like to aim for something bigger. I’m not taking anything away from a Grand Final or a Challenge Cup, but I want to win another World Cup so I’m going to train to win a World Cup and hopefully those accolades come with the title if I put in enough effort and I play hard enough and then I train with Halifax and England hard enough.
“I try to overachieve and whilst you might be disappointed at the end goal, you’ll achieve a lot along the way.”
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 507 (April 2025)
