Inside story: Why the 2003 Brownlow Medal count was the wildest in history

The 2023 Brownlow Medal is set to go down to the wire. Could we be seeing similar scenes to 20 years ago where three men tied for the award? Go inside that frantic night here.

Adam Goodes, Mark Ricciuto and Nathan Buckley with their Brownlow Medals. Picture: Michael Dodge

Nathan Buckley saw a familiar face across a crowded restaurant in Sydney earlier this year, setting in train thoughts of a reunion that has been 20 years in the making.

After the pair finished their meals, the Collingwood great and the familiar face, Sydney champion Adam Goodes, gathered at the bar to share a few beers and to reminisce. They had plenty to talk about.

Buckley, Goodes and Adelaide champion Mark Ricciuto have been linked forever since that wild, long September night at Crown Palladium in 2003.

It was an occasion that changed their lives, as the three superstars finished equal Brownlow Medal winners – the first time there had been a three-way tie since 1930.

The reunion won’t be a public get together, as Goodes prefers to steer clear of official AFL functions, given the way he was treated at the back end of his career. But the trio intends to make it happen.

“We were both dining in the same place (in Sydney) and I caught up with him (Goodes) in the bar afterwards,” Buckley said.

“We’ve been trying to get the three of us together for lunch. We haven’t been able to do it yet.

Adam Goodes, Mark Ricciuto and Nathan Buckley with their Brownlow Medals. Picture: Michael Dodge

“We live in three different cities, but the plan is for us to do it at some stage soon.”

Ricciuto can’t wait.

“We are definitely trying to catch up, but we’ve just got to pin Goodesy down to a date,” he said. “It would be great if we could get together soon.”

That 2003 count prompted celebrations not just in the room that night, but far and wide, including in the small South Australian Riverland town of Waikerie and on Darling Harbour where a bunch of Goodes’ Sydney teammates took a celebratory leap into the water.

The only ones not especially celebrating were newspaper staffers desperate to get the result into the following day’s paper as the count dragged on later than it ever had before.

There were a few pauses on the night brought about by how tight the count was as the AFL worked out whether it had enough medals on hand given the number of contenders. Possible speeches were rewritten on the fly.

It ended up being one of the most thrilling counts – Ricciuto called it a “Group 1 field” – and it might have been the best top-end count in Brownlow history, with nine of the top 11 players a past, present or future winner.

LOG JAM

It was always tipped to be a close one, but nobody could have imagined what was about to unfold.

Buckley, then 31, had been burnt before in Brownlow counts. He had come so close and each time he was favoured to win, he had a swag of votes but not the medal.

“I coveted individual awards in the first half of my career, but not so much by that stage,” he said.

He was focused on winning a premiership medal that week – and given the Magpies had qualified for a second straight grand final against Brisbane Lions, he was on the waters on the night.

He was the $4.25 favourite, from Brisbane’s Michael Voss ($4.50), Port Adelaide’s Gavin Wanganeen ($5.25), Goodes ($8) and St Kilda’s Robert Harvey ($8.50).

Ricciuto, then 28, had polled exceptionally well in Harvey’s 1997 and 1998 triumphs, but even though he had his most consistent season, he wasn’t sure how it would translate into votes.

Only weeks earlier he had lost his cousin and best mate Joe DeVito, aged 30, to deep vein thrombosis, which rocked him.

Ricciuto had played in an elimination final against West Coast just days after his cousin’s death, lifting the Crows to a win before his veneer finally cracked: “As soon as I came inside after we had won, it hit me like a wave. I went into the toilets and bawled my eyes out.”

He thought he was a rough Brownlow chance, but figured after he had only polled five votes in the first 11 rounds it was not going to be his night.

“I went there thinking I had a bit of a chance, then I missed some votes early and I thought, ‘That’s stuffed it!”.

“So I started playing catch-up with some of the other boys with the beers on the tables.”

For a moment, he forgot about winning “Charlie” and started on a few Crownies.

COUNT HEATS UP

The AFL made sure it had four Brownlow Medals at the 2003 count at Crown – back in use as a venue after a one-year failed experiment at Docklands. Another medal was flown to Brisbane for the Lions’ count as they prepared for a grand final.

A problem threatened at the halfway mark. The leader after 11 rounds was Nigel Lappin with 16 votes. Given he was fighting to prove his fitness for the grand final due to broken ribs, he wasn’t at the Brisbane function.

If Lappin kept on polling, the winner might not be accessible, which would have been unpalatable for Channel 9, in its first year as host broadcaster.

By that stage, Ricciuto had every reason to think this wasn’t going to be his night.

He had polled five votes. Teammate Andrew McLeod had five best-on-grounds for 15 votes.

Buckley, too, had missed his expected share in the first half of the season and was sitting on eight votes, while Goodes, then 23, put himself in the hunt with 12 early votes.

Then from rounds 12 to 17, the trio started to make their moves.

Buckley started to poll well, Goodes kept coming and Ricciuto was on a roll, with the Crows star polling in five of those six rounds, including four best-on-grounds.

“Adelaide used to always come over, and the girls would go and get their hair done and get ready, and we would find the closest pub,” Ricciuto said. “It was always a very long day.

“I got a few votes in the middle of the count and then about two-thirds of the way through, someone came up and asked if they could mic me up. I thought that was a bit strange.”

It was time for Ricciuto to get back on the waters – just in case.

Ricciuto and Goodes celebrate with their medals. Picture: Kelly Barnes

HAVE WE GOT ENOUGH MEDALS?

With three rounds to go, a dozen players were still in the frame. The pauses in the count grew longer, as the AFL officials gathered to see if they had enough medals on hand.

Off camera, the league looked ahead to the final three rounds, and discovered that there would be a three-way tie for only the second time in Brownlow history.

Yes, they had enough medals, but did they have the right historical context for what was about to unfold?

“You prepare all your speeches on the basis that the winner is going to be one person,” the AFL’s Patrick Keane said this week. “You prepare seven or eight speeches (for AFL Commission chairman Ron Evans) saying congratulations, then suddenly we had to rewrite a speech in six minutes to say, ‘This is the first three-way tie (since 1930).

“Then we had to speak to the staff to say that we need to get the guys to the stage as quickly as possible because we knew we were going to be late for the papers, for the broadcasters. We knew it was going to be about 15 minutes later than normal, with three different speeches.”

Four years earlier, Hawthorn’s Shane Crawford had been a tearaway winner of the medal. But in 2003 he had copped a fierce barrage of criticism for his Hank Bulger character on The Footy Show.

Now he was within striking distance of a second Brownlow.

“Caro (Caroline Wilson) had me in the gun earlier that year, but I ended up having a good finish,” Crawford said.

He had played on Richmond’s Mark Coughlan in the last round. Both players had 27 disposals and Hawthorn won by four points.

Ricciuto being congratulated by teammates after winning the award.

But when AFL chief executive Wayne Jackson read the votes, Crawford got two votes and Coughlan three, much to his teammates’ surprise. He was stuck on 21, along with Wanganeen, who also polled two votes in the last round.

Then Ricciuto (23 disposals) snuck one vote in a losing Showdown clash to lead by one on 22, with Buckley’s and Goodes’ games still to be counted.

Buckley had 27 disposals and kicked 2.3 in a 16-point win against Essendon. But the umpires found only one vote for him, behind teammate Shane Woewodin (23 disposals and two goals) and James Hird (27 disposals).

He wondered briefly if one of those behinds had been a goal if it might have been different.

As the room collectively held its breath, it all came down to Goodes. He had 17 disposals and 20 hitouts in the Swans’ 34-point win over Melbourne.

He needed two votes to tie Ricciuto and Buckley; three votes to win outright.

Michael O’Loughlin got one vote for his five goals, then Jackson paused and said: “Two votes, Sydney, A. Goodes.”

It was a three-way tie for the first time in more than 70 years.

Back then, in 1930, there had been no public count, and there were no shared medals that year.

Collingwood’s Harry Collier and Footscray’s Allan Hopkins were cruelly deemed to have lost on a countback, and the winner was Richmond’s Stan Judkins as he had played fewer games.

Thankfully, that wrong was righted in 1989 when Collier and Hopkins were presented with retrospective Brownlow Medals.

Buckley is congratulated by then coach Mick Malthouse.

PARTY TIME

If anyone thought three winners might detract from the night, it was the complete opposite.

It ended up being a night to remember for not just the winners.

For Buckley, it meant he could hand over much of the Brownlow duties of the week to his co-winners, as he prepared to take on Brisbane in a grand final.

“The count was a lot of fun … we were on the waters and Channel 9 had the rights, so we kept looking over at (host) Eddie McGuire to see if he could give us a heads-up (during the count),” Buckley said.

“But he kept mum.

“There was a whole heap of stuff that the Brownlow Medal winner had to do, and I remember covering off a press conference the next day then handed over to the boys. I was obviously very proud, but it was back to business.”

Ricciuto loved sharing the experience with his fellow winners.

“I always loved doing things with my mates or in groups, whether it was in sport or business,” Ricciuto said.

“I don’t like being by myself in anything.

“The only people disappointed in me having to share it might have been a few of my mates who may have backed me and had to split their money three ways.”

The celebrations weren’t confined to Crown casino and went into the early hours of the morning, long after Buckley was tucked up in bed.

The trio are keen to catch-up and relive the night.

In Ricciuto’s home town of Waikerie, almost half of the town went around to his parents’ place on Brownlow night to celebrate.

“Everyone went around to their place in Waikerie and they had a massive night,” Ricciuto said. “My old man (Murray) got to sleep at about three in the morning. He had to be on a tractor at six o’clock (6am) and I think he might have been a bit under the weather still.

“He fell asleep and put it through a fence, though there was no damage done. I think the boss said: ‘You better go home and get some sleep’.”

An emotional Ricciuto told that story at his dad’s wake earlier this month, a memory that made him smile through a moment of mourning.

Ricciuto dreamt of winning a Brownlow before his 10th birthday, and it became a reality, sharing it later with Murray and his mum, Carolyn.

Buckley had finally locked away what had always seemed his destiny.

Goodes’ mother, Lisa May, forecast as far back as when he left home as a teenager for Sydney that he would one day win the medal.

Her prediction came to fruition.

And Goodes’ Swans teammates – those who couldn’t be with him at Crown – celebrated in unique fashion that night in the ultimate version of Mad Monday following their preliminary final loss to Brisbane two days earlier.

They jumped into the water at Darling Harbour … it was one of those sort of Brownlow nights.

Originally published as Inside story: Why the 2003 Brownlow Medal count was the wildest in history