Newcastle coach Nathan Brown says Cronulla captain Paul Gallen misunderstood his post-match comments on Friday night after the Knights beat the Sharks.

Both men have appeared to throw cheeky barbs at one another over the past couple of days after Gallen’s original comments from 18 months ago.

The apparent feud started in 2017 when Gallen said the Knights were “two or three years away from being a top eight side”.

“As for winning competitions, well, I just can’t see that happening for a long, long time.”

Brown referenced Gallen after Friday’s win over the Sharks, saying: “I’m probably more interested to see what Gal thinks of us now.”

Gallen was clearly incensed at that remark and wrote in a Wide World of Sports column on Monday he was “surprised” Brown referred to those 18-month-old comments.

“He’s a head coach and chose a press conference to pull apart comments I made 18 months ago. I didn’t realise Browny valued my opinion that much,” Gallen said.

“I’m sure Knights fans would prefer to hear from their coach about their team, rather than his trip down memory lane.”

But Brown said Gallen simply misunderstood what he was trying to say.

“I think Gal’s just seen the little the headline,” Brown told NRL 360 on Fox League.

“But if he actually saw the quote … we actually played a few years ago and Gal’s basically said we’re reserve graders, and look, he wasn’t wrong.

“Gal probably said what plenty of other forward packs were thinking, but people didn’t say it. Gal actually said it. We got physically beat up quite a lot.

“I was actually interested. I was being genuine. I was actually interested in what he thought of the boys after that game on that one performance.

“The challenge for us is to do it again and again because that’s what the good sides do.

“We’ve had some pretty tough times over the past few years so to be able to play Cronulla with Gal and (Matt) Prior and Andrew Fifita, and our forwards do a good job, that was a big move forward for our club.”