Brownlow, Schmrownlow, or, Just Give it to Chris Judd

You know what? I don’t really give a shit about the Brownlow medal. I didn’t watch it, didn’t see Adam Goodes collect his second award and didn’t see the awkward mixture of raised champagne flutes and crown lagers stubbies. For me, the Brownlow is a distraction.

The fact that it is held on the Monday of Grand Final week is an indication that the event itself doesn’t hold much weight, but merely the circumstance it is set in. I think it’s probably a case of the further you take it away from the Grand Final, the less interest it would generate. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the leagues supposed highest honour.

I’m not just talking about the event here either, no, I think the medal itself needs the hype of Grand Final week to attract the amount of interest it does. Let me ask you this; if the event was held 2 weeks after the Grand Final, would you watch it? And does anyone actually barrack for their team’s players to win? I mean, I understand the whole ‘anyone but him’ thing, otherwise known as the Liberatore Rule, but unless you’ve got money on someone, for me it’s a mild curiosity at best, and I write an AFL blog, for Chrissakes.

You see, everyone is waiting for the Grand Final, the season climax, the thing that actually counts. And they are so desperate for knowledge or insight into the game, that they watch an award ceremony, hoping for someone to let slip with some tactics, some late injury news, or some genius theory as to who will win and why.

But the players who are actually involved in the Grand Final don’t give anything away. When they get those always uncomfortable ‘roving interviewer in the audience’ moments, they give the stock standard responses, afraid to say anything, less it somehow be misinterpreted as motivation for the other team. Seriously, these guys look more frightened of their coach than the Cobra Kai kids.

They don’t want to be there and fair enough. I wouldn’t want to either. They’ve go the biggest game of their life that week and now they have to sit through 4 and a half hours of someone reading out names and numbers? Seriously, this is passing as entertainment? We don’t even have the unintentional comedy stylings of Wayne Jackson anymore; “Essudon verse Pordadelay, S. Campo-wee-arley, 1 vote…”

About the only reason to watch the Brownlow is to see the players get drunk and potentially make an inappropriate joke, start a fight with an opposition player, fall down some stairs, or hit on Paul Roos’ wife. There’s also the 20 minute cleavage montage at the beginning of the telecast, which is where I think they should award the medal, and from the photos in the paper, St.Kilda defender Jason Gram would have been a big show.

Quick, name the best player you’ve ever seen. Unless you’re 15 or younger, that should have been answered with an unhesitating ‘Carey’, or ‘Ablett’. And not only did neither of these win a Brownlow medal, they hardly got any votes. Hell, Gary Snr. didn’t get a free kick until about 1994.

Now look at these players who have won it in recent times; Jim Stynes, Scott Wynd, Tony Liberatore, Gavin Wanganeen, Shane Woewoedin and Robert Harvey twice. Are any of these guys getting into any team ahead of The Duck, or Gaz? I mean, Wanganeen won it playing as a loose man in defence for Chrissakes, and you wonder why the Brownlow has lost credibility.

So not only is there a continuing history of undeserved winners, as well as great players who have been continually stiffed, but nowadays it is widely accepted to be a ‘midfielder’s award’, essentially ruling out half of the leagues players.

However, the league does seem to have got it more right than wrong in recent times, Robert Harvey’s back-to-back medals aside. It would be pretty hard to argue that the likes of Voss, Hird, Akermanis, Judd and Cousins aren’t deserved winners. And at least Adam Goodes’ team is competing for a repeat premiership, so someone who impacts the win/loss column is getting recognised. And I’m sure the 6’ 5” Aboriginal running ahead of the ball and getting cheap kicks without a direct opponent didn’t stand out at all in Sydney’s workmanlike midfield.

The whole umpire voting system is so unique, so quaint and so ridiculous that it relegates the Brownlow medal to nothing more than a quirky, gimmicky, throwback that we keep for the sake of tradition. But at least Goodes winning the Brownlow guarantees one thing; West Coast is a mortal lock for the premiership.