Calls to alter Brownlow Medal voting system to remove ineligible players ignore the meaning of the award

BROWNLOW Medallist Nat Fyfe is out of contention for this year’s premier AFL player award after the tribunal verdict, but he should still polls votes to stay true to the medal’s standing

Brownlow Medallist Nat Fyfe, left, and Patrick Dangerfield have both had to deal with being removed as leading contenders for a second medal while carrying an asterisk against their names from tribunal bans. Changing the Brownlow voting and criteria runs the risk of corrupting the medal’s standing. Picture: Michael Klein

FREMANTLE captain Nat Fyfe — unlike most other ineligible AFL players — will be invited to this year’s Brownlow Medal count in Melbourne in late September.

Whether the 2015 winner attends — to sit through a count he might top but not have right to the medal — is another matter?

Fremantle’s Nat Fyfe wins the 2015 Brownlow Medal. Picture: Colleen Petch.

But not in question is the need for AFL umpires to continue to keep Fyfe in their voting for the Brownlow Medal. And this applies for every player who is carrying an asterisk against his name by becoming ineligible through the AFL tribunal verdicts or the call of new match review officer, Michael Christian.

Fyfe’s elimination from this season’s Brownlow Medal count — on a charge of striking Collingwood rival Levi Greenwood — has reignited the question on whether the AFL should instruct the field umpires to no longer vote for Fyfe in the Dockers’ remaining 11 home-and-away matches. There also is the thought on removing the “fairest” aspect to the Brownlow.

These are the contentious suggestions — almost ridiculous, along with the thought, supposedly to spare Fyfe from embarrassment at the count, of not reading Fyfe’s votes at the black-tie dinner on Monday, September 23.

This concept corrupts the medal count, elevating the fourth-best player in Fremantle matches to the Brownlow Medal for the second half of the season — but not the first. If Fyfe is, by the umpires’ view, among the three best-and-fairest players in next week’s clash with Carlton at Etihad Stadium in a fortnight’s time, he should bank the votes.

And the pain of potentially missing out on a second Brownlow Medal is true to the very theme that William Magarey held when he established football’s oldest award in Australian football in 1898 and copied by the VFL (now AFL) with the Brownlow Medal in 1924.

Magarey wanted an award that created esteem and respect for umpires. He was striving for players to be rewarded for their fairness at a time when Australian football was being overwhelmed by on-field violence and intimidation to umpires.

Fyfe — and every other player who incurs the wrath of the tribunal or Christian — should not be spared the consequences of their on-field stupidity when the Brownlow Medal votes are counted with asterisks against their name.

Nat Fyfe of the Dockers makes contact with Collingwood’s Levi Greenwood on Sunday. Picture: Image/Julian Smith

This is the best way to uphold the values held by Magarey and those who followed his vision with the Brownlow while the medals have a “fairness” category.

If the AFL Commission considers the game — with television cameras at all nine weekly matches catching the violence — to be far from troubled as it was for Magarey in the 1890s, then the argument might turn to changing the meaning of the Brownlow as many clubs have done to recognise the “club champion” rather than the “best-and-fairest” player.

Then there would be no debate on keeping Fyfe in the frame to win the Brownlow — and on the voting slips.

The “what if” problem is: How would it look if the clear-cut leader of the Brownlow count commits an on-field crime worthy of a six-game ban in Round 22? Is he still worthy of the medal? That could make for an awkward and most-embarrassing acceptance speech.

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