Brownlow Medal eligibility should be altered to permit suspended players to win it, according to previous winners Chris Judd and Mark Ricciuto.
The annual discussion has been brought into sharp focus again this week with the suspension of leading medal contender and former Brownlow winner Nat Fyfe for striking Levi Greenwood.
The 2015 winner was runner-up to Matthew Priddis in 2014 when he was also ruled ineligible because of suspension. Last year Patty Dangerfield, another former winner, was also runner-up when ineligible to win the medal.
Judd said the eligibility rules should be altered to permit a suspended player to win.
“I would be comfortable if it did change,” said Judd, who won the medal in 2004 and 2010.
Advertisement
“The suspension is a natural handicap anyway. You cant poll (in the games you are suspended anyway) so I think its a natural handicap.”
Ricciuto argues that a one-match suspension is insufficient to disqualify someone when players can be suspended for a game for being “unlucky not unfair”.
“I have had this view for some time,'' he said. ''I dont think you should be ruled out for these small misdemeanours. Potentially it should be you have to be suspended for two or three weeks for something, maybe two weeks.
“I dont think you are an unfair player if you get done for some of the smaller stuff.
“You get a bump slightly wrong and hit the head but because of protecting the head you go fo a week. That doesnt make you an unfair player.
“Danger got done for a sling tackle, getting a tackle slightly wrong or the player who goes to bump and gets the timing slightly wrong. You are unlucky, you are not unfair.
“You cant poll votes in those games you are suspended for. That should be enough.”
One suggestion would be to alter the rules to deem anyone guilty of an intentional act ineligible rather than punish someone who has been deemed to have been careless. Carelessness is not a lack of fairness it is a lack of care.
The reasoning for suspended players being ineligible is the award is for fairest-and-best player so a player suspended in a season is not regarded to have been the fairest player in the year.
Players who are suspended in a finals series in the same year, however, are still eligible to win the medal because judging is only on the 22 rounds of a season.
Players who are suspended and thus ineligible are still awarded votes in subsequent games because the AFL considers that voting in any game should be isolated to that game and whether they were the fairest-and-best player in that match.
Chris Grant was denied the Brownlow Medal in 1997 because he had been suspended for a match for an open-handed slap of Hawthorns Nick Holland.
In 1996 Corey McKernan finished equal leader with James Hird and Michael Voss but was ineligible to share the medal because he had been suspended for one match for dropping his knees on the back and head of Geelongs John Barnes.
Michael Gleeson is a senior AFL football writer and Fairfax Media's athletics writer. He also covers tennis, cricket and other sports. He won the AFL Players Association Grant Hattam Trophy for excellence in journalism for the second time in 2014 and was a finalist in the 2014 Quill Awards for best sports feature writer. He was also a finalist in the 2014 Australian Sports Commission awards for his work on Boots for Kids. He is a winner of the AFL Media Association award for best news reporter and a two-time winner of Cricket Victorias cricket writer of the year award. Michael has covered multiple Olympics, Commonwealth Games and world championships and 15 seasons of AFL, He has also written seven books – five sports books and two true crime books.
Most Viewed in Sport
Morning & Afternoon Newsletter
Delivered Mon–Fri.