A Max Gawn Brownlow Medal win would help recharge the game’s highest honour, writes Jon Ralph

A DECADE after Matthew Richardson set Crown Palladium alight with football’s most unlikely charge, the Brownlow Medal needs a shock upset to recapture its relevance. VOTE

Max Gawn thanks fans after Melbourne’s preliminary final loss.

A DECADE after Matthew Richardson set Crown Palladium alight with football’s most unlikely charge, the Brownlow Medal needs a shock upset tonight to recapture its relevance.

Tom Mitchell would be a thoroughly deserved winner, another star midfielder under the eye of the umpires who has honed his craft to perfection.

But Max Gawn as the victor, channelling Richo’s rock star antics as he fed off the string of three-vote games as the crowd went troppo until he just fell short of eventual winner Adam Cooney?

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Now that would be a night for the ages, and vindication the AFL’s umpires are prepared to consider the actual worth of a player through impact rather than sheer weight of possessions.

Richardson famously polled 22 votes in a year where he kicked his ninth-highest goal tally (48 goals) but suddenly became an umpires’ pet because of Terry Wallace’s inspired move to turn him into a midfielder (actually a wingman).

Mitchell probably deserves to win given his prohibitively short odds and may well be the game’s best player but it is still hard to get hot under the collar about an award where only a single player type can win.

Max Gawn win the ruck tap.

Brownlow favourite Tom Mitchell. Picture: Michael Klein

If Gawn and fellow ruck god Brodie Grundy cannot poll top five in this year’s award, then it is time for an overhaul of the information we provide to umpires before they vote after each match.

The recent evidence doesn’t give us much comfort to think the umpires will buck their recent trend — or the one followed in most media awards — and ignore anyone who isn’t a midfield star.

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In last year’s Brownlow, the entire All-Australian backline was awarded 36 votes, the same total as eventual winner Dustin Martin.

West Coast interceptor Jeremy McGovern hauled in 52 contested marks in the home-and-away season yet polled three votes.

Essendon’s Michael Hurley, who weekly beat a star forward with brilliant body work then rebounded at will, received four votes, with half backs Rory Laird (nine votes) and Sam Docherty (five votes) similarly ignored.

The All-Australian team’s starting ruckman Patrick Ryder polled six votes, its forward pocket Eddie Betts polled five votes despite 50 home-and-away goals and Elliot Yeo’s versatility was lauded by the competition but saw him notch only three votes.

The Herald Sun’s Brownlow predictor contained in Monday’s newspaper has Gawn potentially polling in 13 games but repeatedly mentions his brilliant tapwork as a reason he might poll votes.

Good luck, Maxy.

How many votes will s Max Gawn and Brodie Grundy get? Picture: Michael Klein

Isn’t it time we provided the umpires with enough information to get the decision right rather than whacking them when they don’t?

Umpires admit they look at a ground’s scoreboards to see how many statistics players have racked up on simple possession graphics provided.

But that only skews them to pure possession statistics that can be irrelevant.

Why shouldn’t the AFL’s umpires have Champion Data statistics that reveal Jack Riewoldt’s five direct score assists as well as his four goals, or Gawn’s 18 hitouts-to-advantage as well as his 12 possessions?

The AFL media has all those statistics post-match and it still overwhelmingly favours midfielders, so why should we deny them to the AFL’s umpires and expect them to get it right?

Mitchell’s victory would be a glorious triumph for a player Sydney was happy to jettison, his management company’s bizarre own goal over charging $1000 for a post-win Brownlow no fault of the player himself.

But in an era when the AFL coaches’ votes have far more credibility about a player’s true worth - if not quite the prestige of the game’s biggest individual medal - we will be cheering for a big bloke on the night.