2012 Brownlow Medal handover: Trent Cotchin and Sam Mitchell are worthy winners
IT IS no disrespect to Jobe Watson to say Trent Cotchin or Sam Mitchell (or both) would have made worthy winners of the 2012 Brownlow Medal, writes Andrew Rule.
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- Mitchell, Cotchin are worth Brownlow winners
- Jobe Watson takes day off as Brownlow changes hands
- Did the dog eat Watson’s Brownlow?
- Pair gets Brownlow in unusual ceremony
YOU don’t have to be a brain surgeon to win a Brownlow, but it doesn’t hurt to have one in your corner.
When Sam Mitchell looked into the small crowd of friends and relatives, he saw one of his fiercest supporters, who’d taken an hour off from saving lives to salute a different sort of genius.
Professor Andrew Kaye, decorated neurosurgeon and dedicated Hawks supporter, turned up to Docklands with wife Judy to see Mitchell receive his share of the 2012 medal Jobe Watson handed back last month.
The professor is as one-eyed as Joffa Corfe about his team — he once even volunteered to coach a suburban under-12 side because they played in the brown and gold. But he is especially keen on Mitchell, the player he describes as among the most impressive he’s met, not just on the field.
The Hawks’ loss is the Eagles’ gain, he says cheerfully of the decision to trade Mitchell to the west under Alastair Clarkson’s “if it ain’t broke fix it anyway” philosophy.
He obviously thinks we haven’t heard the last of the ball magnet, even if 2017 is his last as a player.
The Mitchell cheer squad waited and applauded politely while Trent Cotchin got his medal first — from Ian Stewart, who won three of them and a couple of premierships in a dazzling career. The highlights reel of Cotchin’s on-field heroics reminded older watchers not only of Stewart but of another Tiger midfielder who burned extra bright — Billy Barrot, who died just two weeks ago.
Shane Crawford, the last Hawthorn player to win a Brownlow, was there to put the medal around Mitchell’s neck.
It was the first time Crawford had met Stewart: two champions a generation apart, both from country battler origins through natural brilliance and unnatural determination.
As Crawford quietly remarked afterwards, the ceremony went off very well in what can’t help being slightly awkward circumstances.
At one point Mitchell joked — about the list of thank yous he had to make — that it was like being the groom at a wedding. If this was a wedding, it was of the shotgun variety: everyone knew the real reason the well-dressed pair turned up for the ceremony but no-one was talking about it.
The fact Jobe Watson surrendered the medal before being stripped of it hung over the proceedings like the proverbial double-barrel.
Still, it could have been much worse than this carefully-staged media event in a function room on a pier opposite AFL headquarters.
The fact Mitchell was and Cotchin still is not only a ball-winner but a match winner — the sort of player any team would want — has prevented the Retrospective Brownlow becoming the Secondhand Brownlow.
It is no disrespect to Watson to say Cotchin or Mitchell (or both) would have made worthy winners.
Bruce McAvaney, master of ceremonies and grand master of statistics, pointed out that Mitchell, a 300-gamer, had polled more Brownlow votes in more games than any other player, not to mention four flags and five best-and-fairests. And Cotchin was an All-Australian and voted player of the year in 2012, so there are no arguments there.
But football is not all about statistics. On a public relations level it’s also about character and charisma and looks.
On that score, the AFL’s Brownlow revisited show got lucky with the most photogenic pair of players to share a stage since ABBA’s friendly blonde Agnetha and Anni-Frid’s cool brunette fronted with Benny and Bjorn.
On one hand, Trent Cotchin, taller, dark and handsome with the black hair and sightly dangerous leading man looks.
On the other hand, there’s Mitchell the nuggety Aussie boy-next-door with the blond hair and teeth white enough to have his own toothpaste ad.
Then there’s the kids. Mitchell and his wife Lyndall have three snowy-haired moppets. Cotchin and Brooke have two tiny girls. Between them, a photographer’s dream.
But underneath the made-for-television postscript to Brownlow Medal history, real life intrudes.
Sam Mitchell reflected, at 34, he was old enough to be awarded the Brownlow in front of his children.
Then he paid tribute to Lyndall. She kept him floating smoothly across the surface by paddling like hell underneath, he said. Especially when their little family had to cope with nursing her mother, Valda, who was dying of Alzheimer’s.
“To tell the truth, it was all a blur,” he said of the sad time that saw him become an Alzheimer’s Australia ambassador. This might explain why one of the world’s finest brain surgeons sees more to the self-described “little fat footballer” than quick hands and the will to win. He also has a heart.
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