AS one door opens, another one closes with the now former Saints boss Nathan Brown shortly returning to Australia with his wife and young family.

The 41-year-old departs these shores with a ‘Grand Final winners’ tag to stick at the top of his CV and plenty of great memories of his six years in England.

And for the squad he leaves behind in the hands of his erstwhile assistant, he bequeaths a golden legacy – with a champion side brimming with young talent.

After years of treading water – coinciding with the club’s departure from Knowsley Road and the moving on of legendary figures like Sean Long, Paul Sculthorpe, Jamie Lyon, James Graham and Cunningham – Brown’s two-season term in office has seen a club in genuine transition.

And after two years of hard calls being made, eggs having to be cracked and occasionally square pegs being shoved into round holes, the club has its first silverware to grace the palatial Langtree Park cabinet and a playing squad that has the massive potential to move forward.

Catching up with him for one last interview over a pint at the Griffin Inn, Brown was still beaming in the afterglow of Old Trafford – so much so that he paid for the beer.

But when the topic turned to the serious nature of what he had been brought to St Helens to do, Brown was satisfied that history will judge him favourably on the hard calls he had to make to break Saints’ cycle of being perennial Grand Final bridesmaids.

Brown said: “The only way to change the team is to change people – that is the reality of it. There were good players here who had served the club well, and among them were others, including some younger ones, who just were not capable of getting St Helens over the line for whatever reason.

“The only way to fix it was to change personnel and we had to make some hard calls.

“In terms of building the team, if we didn’t have a local junior to promote to fill a position, then we would find them from somewhere else – like going to Batley to sign big Alex Walmsley.

“Then at the end of 2013 we brought in Mose Masoe and Kyle Amor because the team needed big men because we were too small.

“We needed more speed in the back division and that was solved through pushing the local juniors through and then the good young forwards – Tommo, Greg and Joe Greenwood – all came through.

“There were some tough calls to make and numbers of people who would not like Nathan Brown because I told them it was their time to go.

“They are not decisions I like making, you don’t feel good about telling a bloke that his career at St Helens is over, but we had to do and I knew they were the right decisions and the club supported me well.”

The club had to support him too – for despite assembling its best team for a long while and getting off to a rip-roaring eight-match winning start to 2014, the wheels came off with defeat at home to Wigan on Good Friday closely followed by Challenge Cup exit at Leeds.

Although Saints soon got back on the horse, those two defeats – and the subsequent mullerings at Magic and in Catalans which punctuated the season – weighed heavier on the fans than the wins they strung together to stay top of the pile.

‘Brown Out!’ was uttered more than a few times on social media and in letters to the Star, but the club and the broad-shouldered Brown held their nerve.

“They were tough times but I always knew the fruit would come at the end of the year.

“Unfortunately, when we got all those injuries – to Luke Walsh, Jonny Lomax and Jon Wilkin – it looked as though all that hard work was going to be spoilt, but we are here now talking about a Grand Final win.

“The reality is that if Jonny, Walshy and Wilko had not played as well in the games they played we would have not been in the Grand Final because it was the way that they played in that first 12 weeks that got us the League Leaders Shield,” he said.

Reflecting on the fairytale end to his two years at Saints, which culminated in that 14-6 win over Wigan, Brown said: “Not all coaches get that win – some coaches get their reputations harshly tarnished for not winning that final game.

“It was a wonderful experience for a coach to come here to St Helens and what it has done for me is amazing.

“I have never seen a culture like it where they seem to have such a winning mentality.

“St Helens is a brilliant club and it has done plenty for me. Hopefully I have put something back. I am glad we came, but also glad we are going home. It is fitting how it has turned out like a fairytale, winning the Grand Final against all that adversity.”