Fleshing out a dress to pie for

THE Brownlow Medal used to be a dull affair but now the sport has become incidental to the gala spectacle.

THE Brownlow Medal used to be a dull affair - think pie night on steroids.

Highlights included former AFL chief executive Wayne Jackson's murdering of names. Think Inspector Clouseau on valium.

Then, last year, Brendan Fevola went along. Think gorilla on ice.

He apparently changed the rules forever. The AFL's Brownlow night protocols, framed in his wake, should be known as The Fev Manifesto.

They read like teachers' notes for a school excursion. Just substitute dress code for school uniform.

Yet the new rules - go easy on the booze, or else - miss the point. The Brownlow was hijacked long before Fev bumbled into notoriety. For the winner no longer matters much.

If Collingwood's Dane Swan gets up on Monday, the post-night talk will thrill to his tattoos more than his tackles.

His partner's clobber will be studied more closely than any of his three-vote match performances.

The event is no longer a celebration of football prowess. The sport has become incidental to the gala spectacle. The players need not even attend, just as long as their partners show up.

The post-mortem will be conducted by fashion experts mincing about what the women wore last night.

Their patter each year can be reduced to a single theme - flesh.

There have always been spilling cleavages at the Brownlow, of course, not unlike the sights at Flemington's Nursery car park some time after the last on Derby Day.

Now, some women boast what appear to be soccer balls netted under straps.

Fake boobs. Fake nails. Fake tans. Fake eyelashes. The only genuine attribute left to some women attendees is the flush of insecurity that attends such scrutiny.

The crossroads moment, the incident that shifted Brownlow to Lowbrow, was the pioneer of "that dress".

It was 2004. Rebecca Twigley, now the fiancee of that year's medal winner Chris Judd, dared to overcome the Brownlow handicap - being brunette - and turned up toting bits of cloth that suggested a dress was, at most, optional.

Twigley can get away with this. Drape her in green-friendly light globes strung together and it would constitute a sexy statement on climate change, if not an early Christmas.

Yet she set off an unfortunate chain of events. Not unlike Hunter S. Thompson and journalism, or Dennis Cometti and football commentary, Twigley spawned imitators.

Fold into this development the rise of voyeurism cloaked under cover of news. The Brownlow became an outlet for women eager to be noticed, but who will never get noticed in any other forum.

The Brownlow buzz is no longer about the merits of the winner, and whether he deserved votes in the final round when the runner-up didn't get any.

The sport of the Brownlow isn't even about footy any more. It has been hijacked by self-appointed arbiters of taste who rush to label the Brownlow partners as the best and worse dressed.

Some consider it all rather glamorous. Yet it's still a pie night. Think pie night on stilettos and silicone.