Brownlow medal

The Brownlow medal is an award given to the best and fairest player for the entire year in the elite level of Australian Rules football, originally by the Victorian Football League (VFL), which has since been renamed to be the Australian Football League (AFL).

How the award is decided

Currently, in each match the umpires get together and decide who they think are the 3 best players in the game, and award them 3-2-1 votes, with 3 votes being for the best player.

These votes are kept secret and nobody other than the umpires at the ground on that day is aware of what the votes were.

At the end of the home and away season (not counting the finals) the votes are collected and tallied together in a grand function held once per year, in which they are counted out live on television with all players who have played that year attending, in black tie, along with wives, girlfriends and other members of the public who pay the several thousand dollars attendance fee.

Any player who has been suspended, to miss a game due to poor behaviour, at any stage during the season, is deemed to be ineligible to win the award and typically a different colour is used when displaying their name on TV, or with an asterisk next to their name. At times, a player who has been suspended has ended up with the most votes, which some have felt was unfair since they were the best player.

On some occasions, there is a tie in voting, in which case, currently, the award is shared.

In years past, different voting systems were used, some with 9-8-7-6-5 voting for the top 5 players on the game, and others having count back systems to determine the winner in case of a tie in the votes. Retrospectively, previous players who lost on count backs have been awarded with Brownlow medals.

Meaning of the award

A Brownlow medal is meant to indicate the best player in the league and any player who is a former Brownlow medallist is typically held in very high respect throughout their career.

While there are other awards in Australian Rules football, such as the Coleman Medal for most goals kicked in the year, or the award for best player on the grand final, it is the Brownlow medal that is the most prestigious and is held in the highest regards.

The Brownlow medal has been controversial at times, when players who were regarded as clearly the best player of the year were not given the Brownlow medal. Some players have came 2nd in the Brownlow medal on numerous occasions yet never won it, including Peter Matera for West Coast Eagles. Others have won the award in spite of widely regarded as not being one of the better players.

Various other competitions run by media outlets also do their own 3-2-1 or perhaps 5-4-3-2-1 or 9-8-7-6-5 voting systems to in some way predict the outcome of the Brownlow medal and are in some cases right and they often engage in arguments about how unfair the Brownlow medal is if their voting system is considerably different to the result of the Brownlow medal.

Betting agencies get heavily involved in the Brownlow medal, with odds being offered throughout the season for who will win the Brownlow medal (including pre-season and right up to the night of the count).

The people who do the count make predictions for each and every match (8 matches x 22 rounds = 176 matches) to decide who they think will get 3-2-1 for each match (3 votes x 176 matches = 528 predictions) and display these predictions on TV before, during and after the count, to see how accurate they were. These predictions are usually fairly accurate but on occasions they can think that a player will get 3 votes only to see them get 0.

One great criticism is that if a team wins, the winning team will often get more votes than the team that loses, even if the team that loses has the best player on the day, which makes this an often biased system. Sometimes, however, a player on the losing side who didn't do very well, but was the best player on the side, can end up with the most votes.

Different umpires are involved in each match and each umpire uses different criteria for deciding who wins. Some will favour the side that wins, while others go on number of possessions, how many goals they kick, or game-changing moments. Some will always put in at least 1 player from each side. All of this makes predicting the result very difficult, as it is very inconsistent with how the votes are decided.

Typically, midfielders find it easier to get more votes, while full forwards, even if they kick lots of goals, rarely win Brownlow medals. Full backs also rarely get many Brownlow medal votes, even if they are considered to be the best full back in the competition. Even Steven Silvagni, voted as the best full back in history, never won a Brownlow medal. Tony Lockett, considered by many as the best full forward in history, did win a Brownlow medal, but that was early in his career when he wasn't kicking many goals and was more of a centre half forward/midfielder. When he became the great full forward he was, he rarely featured in Brownlow medal counts - and not just because he got into so many fights either!

Nonetheless, in spite of the controversial nature of how the Brownlow medal is voted, it is generally regarded as the highest honour in Australian Rules football. While Brownlow medallists aren't necessarily regarded as the absolute best, and some are regarded as being undeserving winners, while others are regarded as great in spite of not winning it (e.g. Steven Silvagni and Peter Matera), as a group at the end of their career the Brownlow medallists are regarded as the best of the best and after winning a Brownlow medal they are held in even higher regard than they were before.