Revealed: New prizes on offer for AFL and AFLW marks and goals of the year

After being given a pie warmer and a year’s worth of pies last season, the AFL and AFLW’s best mark and goals will receive a much greater prize from this season. JON RALPH has the exclusive details.

Football’s mark and goal of the year prizes have been updated for the modern era with a huge increase in prizemoney that will see the AFL’s best high flyer awarded well over $50,000 in total rewards.

The Herald Sun can reveal the AFL has overhauled its awards prizes after last year’s Mark of the Year winner received a pie warmer and a year’s supply of pies as well as $10,000 in cash.

The Virgin Australia AFL and AFLW mark of the year winner will receive $50,000 in cash from the AFL and two million Velocity Frequent Flyer Points — enough for return business class flights anywhere in the world for two people.

The NAB AFL and AFLW Goal of the Year winners will secure $50,000, while $10,000 from NAB will go to the player’s junior club.

The AFL had been heavily criticised for the second-rate nature of its mark and goal of the year prizes, with previous winner Gary Moorcroft telling the Herald Sun this year it was time to beef-up the prizes earlier this year.

Tahlia Randall takes a Specky over Peter Daicos while footy fans Kelsie Gaffey, Molly O’Neill, Jack de Steiger and Taylor Harrison cheer on. The prizes for goal and mark of the year have been upped this season. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

The league once handed out cars to players for Mark and Goal of the Year but in recent decades has found alternative prizes.

Now there is a genuine prize on offer for the best goal and mark in the men’s and women’s competition for the first time.

The best mark of the AFLW competition will see the recipient handed a reward that was the average wage of female players in the previous season last year.

Goal of the Year winner Peter Daicos told the Herald Sun the prizes were exceptional and believes the clubhouse leader would be Collingwood’s Bobby Hill.

His skyscraper mark last weekend over North Melbourne’s Charlie Comben and Jackson Archer will be up there with Jamie Elliott’s Anzac Day spekky over Essendon’s Ben McKay.

“Wow, can they backdate my prize?” Daicos said of his 1991 goal of the year.

“I got $2000 worth of petrol which shows you the inflation. 30 years down the track it’s a hefty rise and good on them. It’s a great acknowledgment of this award. It just signals where it sits,” he said.

“Just consider how many marks and goals there are each year and this is for only the best of them. Jamie’s mark was bloody sensational but Bobby might have nudged him out.

“Bobby landed with such soft feet and it was a pack mark so it’s a greater degree of difficulty. Bobby had three players in front of him jumping across each other.

“How he perched himself like that between those three bodies, and as my wife Colleen said, it was the old traditional mark where he jumps on someone’s head and then he got pushed up again (by opponent Jackson Archer). He went again. It was just the grace of it.”

The AFL’s executive general manager of customer and commercial Kylie Rogers said the increase in prizes were befitting of the status of the awards.

“We’ve seen some incredible goals and marks so far this season, and the AFL is delighted to join forces with Virgin Australia and NAB to offer these amazing prizes, to celebrate the great moments of our game,” she said.

“In conjunction with our partners we are thrilled to offer the same prizes in both the men’s and women’s competitions, and can’t wait to see who in 2024 will top last year’s incredible back-with-the-flight AFLW Mark of the Year from Courtney Hodder, or Will Ashcroft’s unbelievable mid-air snap for AFL Goal of the Year.”