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The Brownlow Medal (formally the Charles Brownlow Trophy) is an individual award given to the player judged fairest and best in the Australian Football League during the regular season. Determined by votes cast by the officiating umpires after each game, it is considered the highest honour for individual players in the AFL.
Contents
- Winners by season
- Ineligible players who polled the most votes
- Multiple winners
- Voting systems
- References
The medal has been awarded every year since 1924, with the exception of an intermission from 1942–1945 due to World War II. As of 2016, the Brownlow Medal has been awarded 103 times to 85 different players in 89 medal counts.
Winners by season
Notes:
Ineligible players who polled the most votes
A player who is guilty of an offence deemed worthy of a suspension by the AFL's disciplinary tribunal for serious on-field offences is ineligible to win the Brownlow Medal. Suspended players have tallied the highest number of votes for the award on three occasions. In the third of those cases, Jobe Watson, who won in 2012, was later found guilty of breaching WADA's anti-doping code in the 2012 season, and was retrospectively ruled ineligible by the AFL Commission in November 2016.
Multiple winners
The following players have won the Brownlow Medal multiple times.
Voting systems
Since 1924, the voting system for the Brownlow has changed three times.
The lengths of the home and away season have also changed since 1924.
From 1930 to 1980, a countback system was used to determine the winner in the event of a tie. In 1930, Judkins was awarded the medal as he had played in the fewest games. From 1931 onwards, with the introduction of 3-2-1 voting, the winner was the player with the most three-vote games. In 1980, the countback system was removed – in the event of a tie since then, players are considered joint winners. In 1989, the then VFL awarded retrospective medals to all players who had tied, but lost on countback, prior to 1980.