By Greg Baum
Defying predictions of a tight count, and counter-intuitively to a season in which so little separated so many – and so often – Carlton superstar Patrick Cripps strolled away with his second Brownlow Medal. With a record 45 votes, including an astonishing 12 best on grounds, it was a rout.
Cripps led the count by as many as 11, and despite Carlton’s late fadeout still caught the umpires’ eye often enough to prevail handsomely. The joint favourite, Collingwood’s Nick Daicos, finished second for the second year in a row, with 38 votes. It’s a total that would have won the medal any other year of the current 3-2-1 voting system.
Patrick Cripps won his second Brownlow Medal in emphatic style.Credit: AFL Photos
Daicos polled in 18 games, including a sequence of 10 in a row, a record proliferation. But only six of them were threes. Cripps polled in one fewer match, but with a welter of best on grounds dominated the count.
Sydney’s Isaac Heeney was sight unseen, of course, but his pale-faced image haunted the night doubly, as a one-time Brownlow favourite and as a mark-of-the-year candidate who was ineligible for both.
Previously, he had only ever polled eight votes in a season; he’d matched that by round four. He led the count until 11 with what was at that stage an interim Brownlow record. He must not have known whether to laugh, cry or eat his hat.
At least this night the AFL registered Heeney’s votes, unlike on previous occasions when well-performed but ineligible were whited out of the count. And at least Heeney, unlike others who might have been thought to have been denied on the night, has the prospect of a premiership medal as handsome compensation.
The rules are clear, but the comparative slightness of the offence that led to Heeney’s one-match suspension and the way the phantom votes piled up for him this night will speed up the campaign to modernise the criteria.
Dual medallist Lachie Neale and perennial favourite Marcus Bontempelli had only lean pickings to show in the first half of the season and could not make good the deficit. GWS’ Tom Green and Fremantle’s Caleb Serong both polled consistently to finish in the top five of those eligible.
But this night belonged to Cripps.
“I have an appreciation and I respect every player that goes out and plays,” he said in his acceptance speech. “Every time we step out on the footy field, you put yourself up to be judged. That takes a lot of vulnerability.
“A lot of guys are 18, come out of school, and don’t know what they’re doing.
“By doing that, they’re open to a lot of feedback and by doing that, you learn. I have had some years where it hasn’t gone my way, and you feel the brunt of that. What it teaches you is, it doesn’t matter what other people think. As long as you’re happy within yourself.
“You have a lot of people in your corner … you trust, which I do. A lot of people don’t have that. “As long as you work hard, (and) come in with a good attitude, you can do amazing things.
Collingwood brothers Nick (left) and Josh Daicos.Credit: AFL Photos
“It’s a great honour to be up here. It’s something I don’t take for granted. I speak about it all the time.
“I was once a young kid that was inspired by past greats and now I know I’m in a position to inspire.
“Life’s short so get after it.”
If there can be round zero, perhaps the Brownlow Medal is round double zero. It is an event in its own right, enfolding the whole football world – and truth be told, milking their goodwill to the very limit. Is it really necessary interrupt the presentation every few rounds to preview the next bloc of voting in games that already have been played and whose votes are announced seconds later?
The hardcore were not deterred. On Crown concourse, a mini-grandstand even had been erected for fans to behold the parade down the red carpet. All that was missing was the scalpers.
Brownlow men dress at as much cost and with as much attention to detail as women now, if not as striking effect. The cost of living scarcely registered in conversation here; costly turnovers did.
In a further nod to equality on the night, half the toilets were closed to men, which meant that the queue for the gents was as long as for the women’s, for once. Like the count, that made it a near thing for some.
West Coast wunderkind Harley Reid won goal of the year, seemingly running away from half of Melbourne to score. He beat two similar Nick Daicos goals. It was that sort of night and season for Daicos: he was in everything, but came away with no spoils.
Daicos’s jack-in-the-box teammate Bobby Hill won mark of the year for his double-storey leap and grab against North Melbourne. It shaded a similar mark by teammate Jamie Elliott on Anzac Day and another by North Melbourne rookie Zane Duursma.
The Jim Stynes Community Leadership Award was won by Adelaide ruckman Reilly O’Brien for his work on mental health in schools and remote communities.
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