Brownlow Medal predictions 2022: Top contenders from Victorian clubs named
Ollie Wines started last season as a rank outsider for the Brownlow Medal. Nick Smart looks at every Victorian club’s long-odds hopes and best Brownlow bets.
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Will the Bont finally get his medal, or will it be Petracca or Oliver’s turn? NICK SMART casts his eye over the Victorian clubs’ Brownlow fancies for 2022.
CARLTON
PATRICK CRIPPS $13
HE’S one of those players who you feel will always be in the running for Charlie. Plays a Brownlow game —contest after contest, clearance after clearance. Sam Walsh – who finished fourth last year and polled 30 votes – is also great value at $41.
LONG SHOT- Adam Cerra $151
The midfielder has not put a foot wrong over summer ahead of his first season in a Blues jumper. The former Docker will hit the floor running.
COLLINGWOOD
JORDAN DE GOEY $51
De Goey needs a massive 2022 season and everybody knows it. For one, he’s on his last chance at Collingwood. And secondly it’s a contract year. Can he finally deliver on his potential this year? De Goey at his best is as explosive as they come.
LONG SHOT- Jack Crisp $251
Crisp was Collingwood’s leading vote-getter in 2021 with 11 votes after a strong season. A repeat in 2022 could see him shoot up the leaderboard.
ESSENDON
DARCY PARISH $13
Parish had a wonderful 2021 season, polling 26 votes ahead of Zach Merrett on 20. Expect both to continue to steal votes from the other, but Parish is one to watch.
LONG SHOT- Jake Stringer $67
When Stringer performs, he catches the eye and attracts the attention of umpires. If he can put enough strong games together, he could be a dark horse.
GEELONG
PATRICK DANGERFIELD $18
The 2016 medallist has finished second twice (once suspended), third once, fifth (twice), sixth and seventh since 2012. A known vote getter and always in the mix.
LONG SHOT- Cam Guthrie $101
Guthrie polled well last season with 18 votes to be Geelong’s best by a big margin. Can he repeat this season?
HAWTHORN
TOM MITCHELL $18
Can Mitchell add a second Brownlow to the one he claimed in 2018? In a team that finished 14th last year, Mitchell polled an impressive 25 votes. Will be thereabouts again.
LONG SHOT- Jaeger O’Meara $101
Always hard to poll in a team that struggles, but O’Meara is one Hawk that should poll well this season.
MELBOURNE
CHRISTIAN PETRACCA $9
Petracca is third favourite with the bookies, but in the eyes of many he’s the clear Brownlow favourite. The premiership Demon took just two weeks off before returning to pre-season training and looks primed. Clayton Oliver at $10 is also a red-hot chance.
LONG SHOT- Max Gawn $51
He’s not a longshot in the traditional sense, but we know big men tend to not poll as many votes as the eye-catching mids. Polled 16 votes last year.
NORTH MELBOURNE
LUKE DAVIES-UNIACKE $81
Davies-Uniacke is the Roos’ top medal hope with the bookies at $81. Will be very hard to poll votes in a Roos side tipped to struggle again this year, but Davies-Uniacke should be in the mix.
LONG SHOT- Jy Simpkin $101
If Simpin’s game can go to another level this season there’s no reason why he can’t poll a few cheeky votes. Played 22 games last year.
RICHMOND
DUSTIN MARTIN $17
What kind of Dusty will we see in 2022? That is the $1 million question after the triple Norm Smith Medallist suffered a serious kidney injury in Round 18 last year. We’re backing him to get back to his deadly best.
LONG SHOT- Shai Bolton $101
Polled a respectable five votes last season with the promise of more to come this year, particularly if he can pull down any more hangers like he did to claim last year’s mark of the year.
ST KILDA
JACK STEELE $12
Steele is the man for the Saints. Polling an impressive 26 votes last season to finish equal fifth, Steele is certainly one player expected to go close again in 2022. Will captain the team solely this year for the first time.
LONG SHOT- Bradley Hill $251
Hill has starred off halfback during the pre-season and looks set for a big year at Moorabbin. This will be his third season as a Saint.
WESTERN BULLDOGS
MARCUS BONTEMPELLI $8
Surely the Bont has to win a Brownlow before his illustrious career draws to a close. While that is still some time off, the Bulldogs skipper is one of the top favourites again this season for a reason. Finished three votes off winner Ollie Wines last year.
LONG SHOT- Bailey Smith $67
Had eight votes last season and you get the feeling the umpires – who are always a year behind when it comes to Brownlow votes – will pay more attention to the pin-up boy this season.
THE KEY FIGURES TO WATCH IN SEASON 2022
Jon Ralph
The AFL is a great game to watch, but so are its people. These are the most important figures to watch as we enter 2022.
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Michael Voss (Carlton coach)
Voss has inherited the best job in football.
Yes, he has the pressure of dragging perennial underachiever Carlton into the finals for the first time since 2013.
But at some stage this year, as Patrick Cripps re-establishes himself among the competition’s elite and Sam Walsh returns from his foot injury, the case will be made he coaches the best midfielder, forward and defender in the competition.
With Coleman medallist Harry McKay and star fullback Jacob Weitering (how did he miss the All-Australian team?) he has weapons at both ends of the ground and in between a team stacked to the gills with talent.
Voss has the balanced game plan to boot, coming after Brendon Bolton’s defence-first approach and David Teague’s attacking strategy.
If the former Lions coach can become a second-chance hero he will drag the likes of Matthew Knights and Justin Leppitsch back into the equation as senior coaching candidates after their initial failed tenures.
Gillon McLachlan (AFL chief executive)
For the chief executives who have run the AFL, it’s all a matter of timing.
How do you exit the gig at the highest point to sustain your legacy and fulfil former chairman Ron Evans’s stated test of leaving the game in a better state that you found it.
Amid conjecture about McLachlan’s exit date as he approaches eight seasons in the head seat, his legacy includes shepherding the AFL successfully through two years of Covid-19, and the historic establishment of the AFLW competition.
But if he lasted two more seasons — leaving at the start of 2024 only a few months before he hit a decade in charge — his timing would be close to impeccable.
He would have rubber-stamped the introduction of a Tasmanian club in the AFL (without the heavy lifting of its boots-on-the-ground implementation), on top of an 18-team AFLW competition.
And as the game rebounds financially from Covid he could broker a massive TV rights deal (the current one expires at the end of 2024) and another collective bargaining agreement for the players.
McLachlan is only a young man — he hits 50 next January — so why rush to exit stage left.
Alastair Clarkson (ex-Hawthorn coach)
Make no mistake, Clarkson will coach an AFL club next season.
He has already made it clear he is not done with the caper, and if his record as a four-time premiership legend doesn’t burnish his resume, his ambassadorial role helping Tasmania secure a historic AFL licence will be the icing on the cake.
The issue for current coaches is the spectre of Clarkson casts a wide shadow.
He could return to Port Adelaide to take an elite list to its premiership dynasty if Ken Hinkley decides he has run his race, and he would also seem the perfect candidate to grow the game on the Gold Coast.
He would be a hit getting the most out of a talented but unfulfilled St Kilda list if Brett Ratten’s tenure goes pear-shaped, and he might relish the challenge of rebuilding West Coast if Adam Simpson decides nine seasons and a 2018 flag is the perfect end point.
Early-season wins will feel like gold for the many coaches who understand that Clarkson’s availability will influence their own twitchy club boards.
Laura Kane (general manager of competition management)
After being poached from North Melbourne over summer, the rising executive will one day run an AFL club, but right now her biggest role is keeping the AFL competition safe from Covid.
She will head that portfolio in Andrew Dillon’s new-look football department, and despite the AFL’s play-on mantra she will face immense challenges.
As natural immunity from summer Covid exposures wear off and new variants hit the nation, can the league fulfil its promise to play every game on schedule as advertised?
What are the contingencies if Covid hits a team that has not been exposed to Covid, like Fremantle, and its finals chances are decimated by losing a handful of first-choice players for perhaps weeks?
Kane is in charge of finding those solutions, and while there are feel-good vibes of clubs recruiting top-ups while Melbourne emerges from its slumber, the hard slog of winter as Covid returns will surely test the AFL again.
Simon Goodwin (Melbourne coach)
Demons fans flush with their first premiership in 57 years chose to circle the wagons when reports of Simon Goodwin’s behavioural issues splashed across the front pages of the Herald Sun in Michael Warner’s bombshell exclusive.
To suggest his greatest issue was taking players out for a pot, a parma and a punt is wilfully ignorant given those behavioural issues were serious enough to be discussed extensively at Melbourne board level and AFL House.
Goodwin changed his style and his off-field behaviour and the premiership was a reward.
How he responds publicly to that scrutiny — having said little so far about that episode — while driving Melbourne on its quest to back-to-back flags will be one of the season’s narratives.
Stuart Dew (Gold Coast coach)
The glass-half-empty position is that Stuart Dew is a coach without his best player (Ben King), with Alastair Clarkson hovering, and AFL House aware it might need something radical in the shape of the ex-Hawks coach to drag this club to respectability.
The more positive spin is that if Dew can drag the Suns to 10 or 12 wins he will have coached his socks off with inventive forward setups and a frenzied attack on the ball often lacking in Suns teams.
Dew might not have King but as a midfield core he has his captain Jarrod Witts back from an anterior cruciate tear (16 hit-outs to advantage against Geelong last week), the brilliant All-Australian Touk Miller, and a renewed Matt Rowell and pal Noah Anderson.
If that quartet play 80 games between them this year, don’t write off Dew.
Lance Franklin (Sydney forward)
Lance Franklin’s imminent 1000-goal milestone will be a celebration of all that is great about the game but also a reminder about what is broken.
Have this debate with your mates this week: Is his highlights reel better than those of Cyril Rioli, Gary Ablett Sr or Eddie Betts?
Given his sublime mix of skills and tricks, the glory of watching Franklin these past 17 seasons is that no two goals are the same.
Yet the current trends say he will be the sixth and last player in AFL history to reach four figures, given that Jack Riewoldt (715 goals), Josh Kennedy (686) and Tom Hawkins (665) are all future Hall of Famers who will not even get close.
That Franklin could achieve this milestone in an era of historical low scoring shows why he will one day be an undisputable AFL Hall of Fame legend.
Peter Gutwein (Tasmanian Premier)
August is decision time for the AFL and its presidents to come to a resolution on a 19th licence for Tasmania.
The game will not be whole — or truly national — without Tasmania as an AFL club.
But the bottom line is the Tasmanian government will have to underpin the stadium and the continued finances of this team.
As Geelong has found with its continued GMHBA stadium redevelopments, there are few vote-winners for politicians as consistent as investment in football clubs.
Gutwein has played a successful game of brinkmanship in forcing the AFL into a decision on Tasmania by threatening to withdraw funding for Hawthorn and North Melbourne.
Gutwein continues to deliver on the promise of a new stadium, but the Carter report into a new club states the team would “remain dependent on state government funding until the team achieves a minimum level of financial sustainability”.
If the AFL can lock in that government funding, how can it deny the state its own football team?
jon.ralph@news.com.au
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