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There’s a phenomenon in modern footy that I like to call the ‘Tom Mitchell Effect’.
Here’s how it works: ten years ago, pretty much any footballer who hit the magical 40-disposal mark in a game had their efforts lauded by all and sundry, with the enormous stat line given the acclaim it deserved virtually free of any extra nuance.
Then along came Mitchell, who in his first two seasons at Hawthorn not only hit that figure more regularly than any player before or since – 14 times in 46 games, to be exact – but reached the 50-disposal mark on three separate occasions, including a 54-touch game that remains the most prolific match on record.
Because Mitchell’s numbers were so obscenely better than anyone else in the game’s history, he actually received a more negative reaction than had he hovered around the 30-disposal mark like most of the great accumulators. Suddenly the quality and effectiveness of his disposals was being scrutinised, with the ‘metres gained’ stat gaining popularity as a way to attempt to discredit his standing in the game.
Even then-Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley was on this side of the debate, claiming after a 50-disposal Mitchell effort in 2017 – in a match the Magpies won – that he’d chosen not to tag the Hawk because he didn’t feel as if his whopping numbers were actually hurting them all that much.
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Mitchell, in effect, became a victim of his own obscenely swollen figures; it’s a fate he now shares with Patrick Cripps after the Carlton champion’s remarkable 2024 Brownlow Medal win.
The favourite going in after a tremendous season, Cripps is an obviously worthy winner – certainly more so than 2023 champion Lachie Neale, and arguably even more than his 2022 win, which carried the asterisk of his controversial late-season Tribunal escape.
Like with Mitchell, though, the proportions have become the story: Cripps’ 45 votes are, like Mitchell, so extraordinarily ahead of expectations, so earth-shatteringly colossal a set of numbers, that the talking point has become not the acknowledgement of a superb campaign from the Blues skipper, but about whether those figures prove the Brownlow is fundamentally and irreversibly broken.
Put it this way: Cripps was a whole nine votes ahead of Dustin Martin’s then-record 2017 Brownlow tally, in a year regarded by many good experts, including Leigh Matthews, as the greatest in history.
Even Nick Daicos, his runner-up, surpassed Martin’s figure.
It’s surely not controversial to say that Cripps’ season, while excellent, was not a patch on Dusty’s halcyon year; while the comparisons to Brownlow counts 20 years or more ago, when 20 votes more often than not was enough to claim victory, take the Blue’s Brownlow win to the point of farce.
This ridiculous haul was the natural next step of the growing Brownlow trend for the favourites – which of course is now synonymous with the AFL’s star midfielders – to poll more and more votes; from Ollie Wines’ equal-record 36 in 2021, to Mitchell’s 28 in 2018, and now Cripps’ 45 in 2024.
In 2005, Ben Cousins won the Brownlow Medal with an even 20 votes. You could not possibly tell me, nor anyone who watched his feats that year, that they were any less than what Cripps produced this year, let alone less than half of the Blue’s calibre.
Why the enormous, years-long trend of spikes? It’s simple: umpires are denied the chance to look at stats when doling out their votes, but nothing can be done to shield them from the constant media cycle spotlighting the deeds of its biggest stars.
Patrick Cripps kisses the Brownlow Medal. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
That, in turn, makes them more noticeable on game day, and explains such mysteries as Daicos getting a vote for a 15-disposal King’s Birthday game in which he was subbed off, or Cripps polling for a 19-disposal goalless game against Essendon.
Ironically, it’s actually Cripps himself who is the most wronged party here: like with Neale last year, a result not even remotely under control, and one which represents the greatest individual success a player can have, is being used as a stick with which to beat him.
A year ago, I wrote after Neale’s win that the time had come to take Brownlow voting off the umpires, who have enough on their plates during games before the extra burden of keeping an eye on the three players best afield, and besides who could do without the extra layers of criticism that inevitably come their way from jilted supporters.
It’s now even more readily apparent that it’s time to make this drastic change.
My solution then was to follow the NRL’s lead for its Dally M Awards and give an anonymous former player or media figure voting rights for each individual game, allowing the votes to be judged by someone literally being paid to assess who is best afield and who isn’t.
But I’m not so sure about it anymore – while there are a lot of tempting qualities about the proposal, these new voters would likewise be exposed to the same fawning over great players as the umpires are, which has to influence how the tallies end up.
It wouldn’t have been as drastic, but there’s every chance Cripps would still have polled 40 under this system, leaving it open to similar ridicule.
My new solution requires minimal effort on the AFL’s part – there are no extra costs involved, nor more people.
It’s simple: combined the Brownlow with the AFL Coaches Association MVP award, and make it so football’s most prestigious award is actually judged on by the people most capable of assessing which players have had the biggest impact on any given game.
Instead of having those votes revealed at the end of every week, with the winner announced on the AFL Awards Night, have it run in an identical format on the Monday of grand final week, just as the Brownlow is now, with Andrew Dillon reading votes not on a 3-2-1 basis, but on the between five and ten players that polled in that game.
Not only does putting the coaches officially in charge of the Brownlow give it some added credibility – as a general rule, coaches’ knowledge of the game is far less regularly question than the umpires’ – but it gives far greater flexibility in distinguishing between the truly titanic performances and run-of-the-mill good games, the kind of distinction that can see Marcus Bontempelli max out at three votes for some of his Herculean displays in 2024 while Cripps and Daicos matched him for their own far less significant best-afield performances.
Coaches votes still favour midfielders, but it’s to a far less substantial extent than the Brownlow: mids still win it nearly all the time, but forwards and backs being rewarded are commonplace.
Ryan Lester, the consummate Brisbane professional, won five votes from the coaches in their preliminary final win over Geelong – there’s no way known he’d have polled a single Brownlow vote had that game been under the umpires’ jurisdiction.
Coaches have the best seat in the house to view the game, have an innate understanding of their team’s roles and whose performances in them have been most crucial to the result.
Changing the Brownlow in this manner would require only the most minor tweaks from the league, and result in, yes, one fewer accolade for the players, but afford the one that remains a far greater significance than it can have for as long as the umpires are voting on it.
Keep the status quo, and Brownlow tallies are just going to get bigger and bigger, fans’ outcry afterwards more and more pointed, and inevitably, in the end, the most prestigious award in football will have lost all its meaning.
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