Inside midfielder Tim Brown is expected to add leadership and grunt to the Roosters’ engine room after signing on for the 2018 season.

The Geelong-based Brown, 30, will train every Thursday with South Warrnambool as it strives for premiership success.

Brown, who played in the Roosters’ 2011 flag, said training with the group would help him adjust to life back at Friendly Societies’ Park.

“It is always good when you do work for a rather large organisation like a bank because the big four banks tend to have branches in the majority of regional towns which is great,” he said.

“I’m fortunate enough to come home on a Thursday and get back for training and work out of the Warrnambool Commonwealth Bank branch on a Friday.”

The younger brother of three-time AFL premiership forward Jonathan said he was feeling fit after a spate of leg injuries.

He is on the comeback trail from hip surgery which ruled him out of Geelong league club Newtown and Chilwell’s 2017 plans.

Groin surgery the season before also limited his impact.

“I tore a hamstring off the bone back when I was 15 and I think it’s all stemmed from that unfortunately,” Brown said.

“You don’t really think about it as a kid but it is amazing that overcompensation your body takes down the track and it comes back and hits you pretty hard.

“But the body is feeling pretty good now. I’ve done a couple of months of training now and fully getting back in the swing of things.”

Brown is excited to play alongside good mate Nick Thompson in the Roosters’ midfield and work with their emerging players.

“I don’t mind putting my head over the ball and getting the hard ball,” he said.

“I am not your flashy type of player but….I make sure I am on the bottom of the pack.

“I am just excited to get home and play, it’s red and white in the veins, in the blood, and it is just going to be good playing under a coach who’s very well spoken of around the south-west.”

Coach Mathew Buck said South Warrnambool was thrilled to sign a player of Brown’s calibre.

“He is obviously a previous best and fairest winner and premiership player and you can never have too many of them,” he said.

Buck said Brown had the “same kind of tenacity around the contest” as his older brother Jonathan.

“I remember Tim Brown throwing himself around and being a really hard player to play against and I suspect he still is,” he said.

“If he can get the ball and get it on the outside to our quicker players that would be a real bonus for us.

“His ability to teach others is probably going to be a real highlight for us.”