Huddersfield Giants' departing coach wants a final dig at Wigan

"It's not been a great week for people called Brown," the former England coach Tony Smith noted last Saturday, after his Warrington team had demolished Nathan Brown's Huddersfield Giants to knock them out of the Challenge Cup. But like his political namesake, Brown has less to worry about this weekend now that, after a difficult and uncertain period, his future is finally clear. A few hours before Gordon Brown's announcement outside no.10 last Tuesday evening, Huddersfield had issued a statement confirming that their highly rated Australian coach will be returning home to Sydney at the end of this season. He had been due to stay until 2011 but a Skype conversation with his five-year-old daughter Annie persuaded him that family had to come first. "She said to me 'Daddy, can you please move back to Australia because I want to live here'," explained Brown, whose family have been happily stranded in Sydney for several weeks after their scheduled return to Europe was delayed by the volcanic ash. "That summed up for me 100% what I needed to do. "The kids are home and they're going to the beach, and to the park, and going on boats – and they don't get to do that here. They deserve to do that because that's the lifestyle I had and it's the lifestyle I want for them. They've given up two years of that for my coaching." Brown conceded that the speculation over his own future may have contributed to Huddersfield's cup capitulation against Warrington, comfortably their worst performance since he took over at the start of last season. "Losses like that probably build up over a period of time," he added. "It's probably an accumulation of small things and, as a coach, I have to put my hand up. I could have been a bit harder on some people. "Now I've made the decision, I feel comfortable. It's been on my mind a fair bit over the last few weeks. The key is that we come out this week and put in a good performance." They will have to, against a Wigan team who beat them two weeks ago at Murrayfield to consolidate their own position at the top of the Super League table, and leave the Giants struggling to stay in the top four. The rematch is given further intrigue by the lingering bad blood between the teams, and their Australian coaches, following a late, high tackle by the Wigan captain Sean O'Loughlin on the Huddersfield hooker Luke Robinson during that game – and Brown's reaction when it went unpunished. He rambled through countless clauses in one of the Murrayfield dressing rooms, but his argument could fairly be summarised as follows: "If referees keep letting the big blokes on other teams take out my little blokes, I'm going to let the big blokes on our team take the law into their own hands." David Fa'alogo, the New Zealand enforcer who Brown nominated as just the sort of big bloke for that job, is still missing tomorrow with a hamstring injury. But the Giants still have plenty of bulk and aggression up front in the likes of Darrell Griffin, Eorl Crabtree and Keith Mason – the prop who struck up an unlikely friendship with Mickey Rourke after a chance meeting in a London hotel following last year's Challenge Cup final defeat. The game is given one more fascinating subplot by another Brown – the Huddersfield stand-off Kevin, who joined the club from Wigan three years ago and is being strongly linked with a return across the Pennines. That speculation has drawn strong denials both from Wigan's former Melbourne coach Michael Maguire and from the Giants, in a busy week at the Galpharm that has also featured the end of a police investigation into an allegation of rape during their pre-season training trip to Newcastle – no charges will be laid – as well as confirmation that the club will have a new coach next year. The early Challenge Cup exit means that success in the Super League play-offs now represents Brown's only chance to go out on a high. "Now all the speculation's out of the way, we can get on with it," he said.