North Melbourne forward Ben Brown is the raging favourite to take out the Coleman Medal

WITH Jeremy Cameron’s looming suspension, Ben Brown is now the raging favourite to take out this year’s Coleman Medal. Can anyone catch him? Sam Landsberger looks at the rise of the star Roo.

Ben Brown is having a stunning year. Picture: Michael Klein

NORTH Melbourne superstar Ben Brown has been installed a raging favourite to become the club’s first Coleman Medallist since John Longmire in 1990.

Brown (40 goals) has opened up a five-goal lead on Jeremy Cameron (35), with Jesse Hogan and Lance Franklin (31) equal third.

But with Cameron tipped to receive a lengthy suspension at Tuesday night’s AFL tribunal, the TAB crunched Brown into $1.35 favourite for the Coleman Medal.

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Brown, 25, opened the season at $17 and has shortened every round.

He would deliver the Kangaroos their fifth Coleman winner overall.

Legendary centre half-forward Wayne Carey never won a Coleman Medal, but in 1998 Carey kicked 80 goals to finish runner-up to Tony Lockett (109).

“He fought his way through, Browny,” Roos coach Brad Scott said on Saturday night.

Ben Brown is having a stunning year. Picture: Getty Images

“He was certainly double-teamed (and) triple-teamed at times (and) they dropped their ruck back in front of him.

“But he just keeps fighting through. He doesn’t whinge and complain, he just gets on with it.

“To finish with five and a pretty important goal assist in the last 40 seconds was pretty important.”

Brown is likely to receive his first All-Australian selection this year and is on track to receive North Melbourne’s goalkicking award for the third consecutive season.

A Champion Data breakdown showed Brown was the AFL’s No.1 focal point inside 50m.

The Kangaroos target Brown with 38.8 per cent of their entries, ahead of West Coast’s Josh Kennedy (38.5 per cent), Gold Coast’s Tom Lynch (34.9 per cent) and Franklin (34.8 per cent).

This year the Roos have targeted Brown with 152 entries, ahead of Franklin (111), Kennedy and Geelong’s Tom Hawkins (both 110).

On Saturday night the Kangaroos targeted Brown 21 times, with the next highest target captain Jack Ziebell (four times).

Scott attributed Brown’s goalkicking accuracy of 73 per cent to his dedication at training.

“It’s a great lesson to young kids — if you want to be an accurate set-shot for goal, have a really solid routine and get enormous amounts of repetition,” Scott said.

“He’d have hundreds (of shots at goal per week). And it takes a fair time to have hundreds of set-shots when you’ve got a routine like that.

“We run a football program at North and more is better in terms of goalkicking.”

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