Wreck It Ralph: Why it’s time for the AFL to redefine its awards eligibility
Shai Bolton was robbed of Mark of the Week and Kysaiah Pickett can’t win the Rising Star. This is proof the AFL awards system needs changing, writes Jon Ralph.
Jon Ralph
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The football world grudgingly accepts rules that are patently ridiculous only because it has always been so.
Why is Kysaiah Pickett ineligible for the Rising Star simply because he played more than 10 games in his debut AFL season?
Why do we accept the AFL public have any role in judging the Mark of the Year when it should be an award up there with the Brownlow Medal as all that is great in our game?
It is time for a major shake-up of the league’s awards, their eligibility criteria and how they are judged.
Overhauling the Brownlow Medal is an impossible task given the league’s bias towards midfielders is reflected by the media, the players’ award and the coaches’ award.
Yet, so much could be changed so quickly to improve these awards.
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Nine rounds into the AFL season the AFL Rising Star is as wide open as it has been in years.
With second-year player Pickett ineligible, there is a chance for an eligible player to put together six big rounds to scoop the pool.
GWS midfielder Tom Green is the new favourite ($4) with TAB, followed by Lachie Sholl ($6), Nik Cox ($7), Chad Warner ($7), Luke Jackson ($9), Tom Powell ($9), James Jordon ($9), Mitch Georgiades ($11) and Riley Thilthorpe ($13).
Matt Rowell, still a month away from knee issues, is $21, while Errol Gulden would be hugely over the odds given his body of work at $21 if not out for six weeks with injury.
GWS mid Greene was the No. 10 pick in the 2019 national draft and played six games in his debut year.
Pickett was taken two picks ahead of him but played 14 debut-season games, kicking 7.13 in a year full of cameos but few four-quarter efforts.
He has exploded this season and would be the $1.10 favourite if eligible.
He is everything we should be celebrating in the AFL: Melbourne’s resurgence, an indigenous talent thriving because of his own hard work, a ground-level star who flies for at least one mark of the year each round.
Surely the simpler qualification period is the first two years of a career, which allows key position players a chance.
The bloke who wins it in his first year is clearly ineligible in the second season.
The league has turned what should be one of the league’s most cherished rewards, the Mark of the Year, into a popularity contest.
Shai Bolton will still be eligible after the farce of a web vote that saw Brody Mihocek’s effort boosted chosen instead.
Under the AFL’s own rules on its website its media arm AFL Media will nominate five extra nominations.
The rules state the league’s game analysis crew then judges the marks, but it is actually the All Australian crew who get a vote.
Does that sound ridiculously convoluted just so the AFL gets its fan interaction quota?
If you were starting the award you would get these ten people on a panel – Warwick Capper, Peter Knights, Michael Roach, Russ Robertson, Tony Modra, Jeff Farmer, Gary Ablett Sr, Shaun Smith, Brett Burton, Alex Jesaulenko.
They alone would decide the Mark of the Round and Mark of the Year.
Think of the prestige when Bolton was handed his award by Farmer on Brownlow Medal night?
Ditto for the Goal of the Year.
Peter Daicos, Kevin Bartlett, Wayne Carey, Brendan Fevola, Stephen Milne, Brent Harvey, Michael O’Loughlin, Steve Johnson, Brad Johnson, Peter Hudson wouldn’t be a bad starting point to diagnose degree of difficulty compared to sheer fluke.
The Brownlow Medal can never be fixed.
Of the top 17 in the Coaches Association award vote tally after eight rounds all were mids except Max Gawn, Tom Hickey, Taylor Walker and Darcy Moore.
But on Brownlow Medal night Danny Frawley’s Golden Fist award could be turned into something special recognising the defender who echoes his greatest qualities as a stopper and interceptor.
Key forwards will never win one either, but then again they secure the massive contracts and decide Grand Finals so they might just have to suit themselves.
There will always be quirks and loopholes but the Rising Star eligibility doesn’t have to remain so poorly framed just because someone decided it should be so back in 1993.
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