A new name has been popping up regularly at Arden Street and talk of another club debutant is beginning to gather momentum.

Regular watchers of Brad Scott's weekly media conferences will have heard 'Ben Brown' spoken about, but may not know too much about him.

The club's third pick in the 2013 National Draft, Brown has endured an injury-interrupted first season at Arden Street but has been able to play the last three matches for Werribee in the VFL.

In each of his outings, the Tasmanian has grown in confidence.

"When I first got to the club, I had an injury in my foot," Brown told NMFC.com.au.

"I've got a tarsal coalition in my foot, which is from birth. Two of the bones on the side of my foot are fused and they're not supposed to be.

"Basically what that means is my foot's a little stiffer than it should be. As a result of that there was a bone spur on the top of my foot. I had to get that right with a bit of rest and rehab and eventually that came right."

While the foot injury had healed by mid-January, disaster soon struck Brown once again.

"I injured my knee at training in a collision with Lachie Hansen," he recalled.

"I went in and had to have an arthroscope on the knee, so that kept me out for eight weeks."

For a first year player still adjusting to the rigours of AFL training, a fair assumption would be that the back-to-back injuries would set his fitness base back a long way.

However Brown wouldn't let it hamper his push for a Kangaroo debut and he took full advantage of the medical support and rehabilitation resources the club offers.

"It didn't (affect my fitness base) as much as it would have last year. The amount of rehab you do at the club in a full time environment, especially all the cross training, the fitness was obviously still affected the first game back but it wasn't as much as it would have last year.

"Getting back from the injury would have probably been tougher (away from North) with more chance of re-injuring the certain body part with no injury prevention weights that we do here. Obviously you don't do the same amount of conditioning and it's not a full time environment outside the AFL."

Part of his rehab involved restricted game-time in the VFL and Brown is back to full fitness after three games.

"The loads that I've been allowed to put through the knee have been limited so far. Last week was the first full game that I've played for the year.

"The limited loads allow for the knee to come right during the week and so the recovery is sufficient to play the next week.  

"I was really happy with how it went on the weekend; it felt the best that it has in the three games so far. I've noticed that I've been pulling up a lot better than I have last year, the recovery times this year have been much less.

"The muscular side of it, the tiredness of the body, it's all been reduced this year and I think a lot of that is again down to the injury prevention weights we do.

Brown is in a unique situation at Werribee. Often after mature age recruits arrive at an AFL club, they settle with a different state league affiliate than previous years.

This hasn't been the case for him though, as he was recruited from the Tigers at the end of 2013 and has been able to stay in a comfort zone of sorts.

However the new label of 'AFL-listed player' hasn't affected Brown's attitude.

"On game day it doesn't feel any different to last year. It's a team game; you can't play well unless you're within the team structure.

"There's no real difference apart from the fact you're trying to take the next step up to playing in the AFL side compared to getting noticed by an AFL side.

"You can only do what's within your control and that's to play the best footy you can for the team and take it from there."

When the he was recruited by North, it was with an eye to playing in the third tall forward/second ruck position which is so crucial to the Kangaroos' structure.

In his time at Werribee in 2014, there's been a slight tweak to his role, adding some intriguing possibilities in the event of a future senior call up.

"My role at Werribee is to play as a key forward, going a little bit through the ruck, pinch hitting mainly to give Daniel Currie a chop out.

"I'm playing that key forward role, particularly as the deepest forward and the longer target. I try to hit up still but mainly playing as a deep forward and providing a contest in the air with the added height I have.

"So far coming back from the injury my ruck time has been limited just because of the nature of the knee. The splits are really up to the discretion of the coaches."

Playing forward and ruck requires a special sort of athleticism. Luckily for the 21-year-old, he spent a lot of his childhood playing basketball.

Standing at 200cm tall, Brown would have made a decent basketballer. He's been able to use a few of the lessons learned on the court and move them to the football field.

"There are definitely aspects of basketball that help. I've always been lucky enough to be fairly agile for a big man and it's probably the basketball movements that I've picked up in that sense.

"In the ruck you're using your boxing out skills and then tapping it down and generally rebounding for marking.

"There are a few transferrable skills but they are very different games. You realise that when you try and play basketball again. Within half a minute you're blown up but you can play a whole game of footy."

Spending time in dual positions can only help Brown in the future, and it also means he has a larger pool of senior players to draw advice from.

In the forward line there has been Drew Petrie and Aaron Black, while Todd Goldstein is the gold standard of ruck work.

However there is the danger of taking too much on board but Brown has a simple remedy to rectify any possible issues.

"You've just got to have your couple of focus areas every week that you look to improve. You can't improve your whole game at once. As much as I'd like to be as good as Drew, as good as Blacky or as good as Goldy in the ruck, it's not going to happen straight away.

"I've just got to have that mentality that this is something from the weekend I didn't do very well, so I'll focus on that during the week. For example this week it was my ruck work around the ground and some of my leading patterns.

"If you work on those for a few weeks you get better at them slowly, and if there's anything glaring then you add that in."