INTRODUCTION

Winning the Brownlow Medal is widely considered to be the ultimate and most prestigious individual achievement in the Australian Football League (AFL). Much of the reason for this lies within the historical context of the award. Named after Charles Brownlow – a delegate with the league (and Geelong Football Club) in its formative years – the medal was established as the league's “best and fairest” award in 1924 on his death, making it an award with almost a century-long tradition. Moreover, there have been very few changes made to the rules governing the award (unlike playing rules, etc.) since then.

Initially, one vote was given to the best player in every home and away match (immediately following its conclusion) by the officiating umpire, which was then modified to a 3– 2– 1 system for the three best players in 1931. This system has remained ever since (except for a brief war recess from 1942 to 1944). Upon the change to two umpires in 1976, both umpires cast separate batches of votes, but in 1978 this reverted to a single batch, with umpires having to agree; this remained following the introduction of a third umpire in 1994.

Although umpires – who, effectively, act as independent arbitrators – appear to be the most suitable party to award the votes, there is nonetheless an extensive ongoing debate as to whether this is the most appropriate system (for example, see McFarline ). For this reason, some analysts believe that other awards – notably the Leigh Matthews Trophy (with votes cast by AFL Players’ Association members) – may more accurately represent the truly best player of a given season. One associated hypothetical is how Norm Smith Medal outcomes in the grand final (determined by a five-member “expert” panel) might have been different over the years had these decisions instead also lain with the umpires. 1993

On a personal note, as a former boundary umpire, albeit at a lower level of the sport (221 senior games in Melbourne's Northern Football Netball League [NFNL] from 2000 to 2015), I was privy occasionally to such post-match discussions between field umpires, in which one of them would flatly refuse to award votes to a player suggested by another umpire as having played well.