Preview The Western Bulldogs Brownlow Thread 2019

[Dogs Rule]

And that's a good thing.

Being the fairest and best player on the ground has almost nothing to do with which side actually won (except that sometimes - very rarely - a brilliant player can drag his side over the line almost single-handedly).

Media are morons. The umpires just gave them the big finger. Not before time.

I see your point, but you would think only rarely should a player get three votes when their team gets hammered. Happened to the Blues and Dockers a bit this year. Just a bit curious.

 

[mcgleereturns]

Bont only polled in 9 games from the umpires. 16 from the coaches.

Compared to some of the other top voters:

Fyfe - 13 umps, 14 coaches
Dangerfield - 11 umps, 14 coaches
Cripps - 11 umps, 12 coaches
Kelly - 9 umps, 12 coaches
Grundy - 9 umps, 13 coaches
Neale - 12 umps, 13 coaches
Macrae - 12 umps, 12 coaches

Yeah but sometimes 6 or 7 players can pick up votes. You could get 4 votes in Coaches award and not be in top 3. Bont was consistently in top 4-5 Players but that doesn’t translate to Brownlow votes. Got 28 in HS award on a 3-2-1 system though.


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[Dry Rot]

You are all a bunch of one eyed campaigners here - why hasn't Jake Stringer received due recognition for receiving his two votes?

 

[mcgleereturns]

You are all a bunch of one eyed campaigners here - why hasn't Jake Stringer received due recognition for receiving his two votes?

Wayne Carey would have given him more. Bloody umpires.


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[DylanW]

You are all a bunch of one eyed campaigners here - why hasn't Jake Stringer received due recognition for receiving his two votes?

Was literally going to mention that, but I decided I was better than that.

Upon reflection, you're clearly the better man

 

[Dry Rot]

Wayne Carey would have given him one more. Bloody umpires.


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EFA.

 

[bobs head soup]

Bont only polled in 9 games from the umpires. 16 from the coaches.

Compared to some of the other top voters:

Fyfe - 13 umps, 14 coaches
Dangerfield - 11 umps, 14 coaches
Cripps - 11 umps, 12 coaches
Kelly - 9 umps, 12 coaches
Grundy - 9 umps, 13 coaches
Neale - 12 umps, 13 coaches
Macrae - 12 umps, 12 coaches

Umps vote as play unfolds. Coaches take a broader view. Coaches voted Bont as best. Fyfe is a serious gun though. Both awards are a legit fair call.

 

[mcgleereturns]

EFA.

Nah Wayne’s his biggest fan. Thought he was really good last year and this year was a great year. Must see a bit of himself in young Jakey, not necessarily in a football sense.


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[Braybrook Son]

None of those were as bad as Dawson Simpson jagging a vote for his 8 disposal masterclass in round one, a game in which they lost the clearances.

Didn’t Simpson get 2 or 3 against us in 2017?

 

[flamethrower]

Interesting to note that Bont had big Red Jack Redpath as his plus one tonight...thought he would be required at the WRFL tribunal - unless they held it over with so many Deer Park players sent off during the GF on Saturday.

 

[hoianbulldog]

Congratulations to Marcus Bontempelli who moves into the top 10 of Bulldogs Brownlow votes and Jack Macrae who moves into the top 20.

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Wow. Cooney got more votes than Hawkins and Johnson. He played on a busted leg every game after we won the brownlow as a youngster.

 

[hoianbulldog]

What a lot of bulls**t. Freo loses to Hawks by 31 points, Richmond by 25 points, Fyfe gets 6 votes. GWS beat Pies by 47 points, Grundy gets 3 votes. Carlton wins one game out of first 9 or 10, Cripps gets 18 votes. Absolute joke

Why? Were those players not bog on those days.

Being on the winning team doesn't guarantee 3 votes.

You clearly were not around when a bloke name K Templeton (3 votes) played for the dogs.

 

[giblj]

Didn’t Simpson get 2 or 3 against us in 2017?

No, the game I mentioned contained the one and only vote of his career

 

[hoianbulldog]

Interesting to note that Bont had big Red Jack Redpath as his plus one tonight...thought he would be required at the WRFL tribunal - unless they held it over with so many Deer Park players sent off during the GF on Saturday.

Who won?

 

[Braybrook Son]

Why? Were those players not bog on those days.

Being on the winning team doesn't guarantee 3 votes.

You clearly were not around when a bloke name K Templeton (3 votes) played for the dogs.

No I just missed his career mate

 

[ManOfClay]

You are all a bunch of one eyed campaigners here - why hasn't Jake Stringer received due recognition for receiving his two votes?

I got you

Congrats to Jake stringer for taking until round 19 to overtake Josh Schache on the Brownlow leaderboard for 2019

equal 128th in the Brownlow with Bailey Dale. Out polled by six bulldogs players. Wouldn’t have won our goal kicking, in fact only kicked one more goal than a 19 year old in his first year as a forward (that 19 year old polled more Brownlow votes). Pinch hit in the midfield but averages 12 touches a game. Only polled votes in one game.

there’s a reason stringer was worth only two second rounders above his off field stuff. For all the talent, he’s just not that good. Don’t @ me Essendon supporters, we gave you charity there and you are still a 13% worse side. We’ve played finals, bottomed out, made finals again, won a flag, bottomed out and rebuilt and we’ve overtaken you all before you’ve won one final.

 

[grassman75]

I’m sorry but Fyfe didn’t have that good of a year. Seriously.

Not a 33 vote Brownlow winning year from a team that finished 13th and sacked its coach. I guess he benefitted from Neale not taking votes anymore.
I'm done with Brownlow betting now. It's rorted

 

[grassman75]

What a lot of bulls**t. Freo loses to Hawks by 31 points, Richmond by 25 points, Fyfe gets 6 votes. GWS beat Pies by 47 points, Grundy gets 3 votes. Carlton wins one game out of first 9 or 10, Cripps gets 18 votes. Absolute joke

I'll never give up on the thought that the 3 should be reserved for the winning team if the game is won by more than 4 goals, unless there are extremely exceptional circumstances. I still remember Ablett polling 3 in a +90pt loss to Coll while at the Suns. Surely there is one player in the winning 22 who is more deserving of 3 votes in those cases.

#Rorted

 

[ossie_21]

He’s a gun, but no way did Fyfe really have that good of a year he pisses it in by 6 votes & gets such a high number with most experts picked a winner having about 28 votes max

 

[Dogs_r_barking]

Watched the Brownlow with a Saints fan who remembers that when the Saints played Carlton Jack Steele kept Cripps to twenty touches while getting 25 himself. Yet he got the 3 votes, extraordinary.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

It’s as if, after some games, the umps (no doubt exhausted from all the running, shouting and whistling) when handed the voting paper, fill in the name of someone they know who generally plays well, or who stood out once or twice for some specific reason. Ah well.

And people, it’s “Fyfe didn’t have that good a season “, not “good of a season”.

You’re welcome.

 

[Mantis Toboggan]

I think the problem is less about the award and more about the honour attached to it. It simply should not be the greatest individual honour in the game. The fact that the award can really only be won by a midfielder should be enough to discredit it.

 

[charcoalchicken]

What was our clubs final tally?

 

[Freshwater]

What a remarkable change there is in the game now. Tony Liberatore won the Brownlow in 1990 with 18 votes! And in those days the guns NEVER came off the ground onto the bench. Umpires spread the votes around like confetti.

 

[Mr. Walker]

As season 2019 fizzles out to a disappointing end the last AFL event of the year where we can still make a splash is the Brownlow Medal tomorrow night 23rd September. Let's hope it's a decent old splash we make and not a ker-plink.

When I was a teenager I listened to the radio broadcast from VFL HQ mausoleum (then known as Harrison House) where they solemnly read out the 3-2-1 votes. If I remember correctly we never knew which game the votes came from. I think they used to read out all the ONE votes first, then all the TWO votes and then the THREE votes. This was in the days of only one central field umpire so perhaps they didn't want their umps to come under too much unfavourable scrutiny for not giving a BoG to whoever was the Brownlow favourite when he umpired that game.

Then when the winner was officially declared the journos got on their telephones or rushed out in their cars to interview the winner who never seemed to be at any sort of club gathering. They were always at home with their wife and kids and invited the photographers in to take the photos for the front page of the Sun the next day.

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Historically we did well in the Brownlow. For a while there we were winning one every fifth year and it was a big deal. However there were whispers that we celebrated the individual achievements too much and never got the big TEAM achievement, the flag. Who knows? Maybe that was so but when you were starved of success you had to celebrate what small achievements your club could manage along the way ... a Reserves flag, an U-19 flag, a Coleman, a Brownlow.

Our first Brownlow winner was ruckman Norm Ware in the war years 1941. The record books however show that Allan Hopkins (175cm) won one in 1930 when he was Captain-Coach of the club at the age of 26. So he did, but it was in a piece of AFL revisionism when they decided in 1989 to award Brownlows retrospectively to any player who had tied but lost on a countback since the medal was first struck in 1924. The AFL had abolished the countback system after the 1980 Brownlow but it took another 9 years to decide that it was unfair to past countback losers. The year that Hopkins lost (then won) the Brownlow he polled 4 votes - the lowest ever winning tally. This was because in those days they only gave a BoG vote, not the 3-2-1 of later years. He tied with Stan Judkins (Rich) and Harry Collier (Coll) but Judkins had only played 12 games to Hopkins' 15 and Collier's 18 so quite reasonably they gave it to Judkins. Anyway, Hopkins was one of our first VFL star players. He polled well in most Brownlow counts and in fact got 25 votes the following year (1931) when they changed it to 3-2-1 votes. He lost by one vote to the great Haydn Bunton. Oddly enough he only won one club B&F and that was in 1931, not 1930. Fortunately Allan was still alive when the AFL awarded his retrospective Brownlow (he died in 2001 aged 97!) I can't recall whether there was any fanfare over it - perhaps Vinegar Mess has some press cuttings?

Norm Ware (193cm) was 30 when he won his Brownlow but he never polled another vote. This was because the award was suspended from 1942-45 because of WWII. He did play a season in 1946 before retiring aged 35. He kicked 33 goals that year but didn't poll a vote. He died in 2003 aged 92.

Our next winner was - like Hopkins - a centreman, Peter Box. Box (180cm) was a member of the first Bulldog side to win a flag in the VFL/AFL in 1954 but he left top level football aged only 25 after the 1957 season. Like Hopkins he failed to win the club B&F the year he won the Brownlow. It went to Don Ross in 1956. He did however win a B&F in 1955. Box died only last year, aged 86.

John Schultz (1960) was the first Brownlow medal winner I can remember watching in his playing days. He was a ruckman (191cm) and he polled 20 votes. He was always a gentlemen - as those who shared the premiership presentation stage with him in 2016 can testify - he no doubt benefited from the "fairest" aspect of the Brownlow. However he was a genuinely good player throughout his career polling 111 votes from 188 games.

In 1975 another iconic ruckman Gary Dempsey (197cm) won a Brownlow. He polled a staggering 246 votes from his 329 AFL games. My Gary Dempsey memories are mostly of him taking mark after mark a kick behind the play in defence but he was a great tap ruckman as well. He won 6 club B&Fs, the last five in a row. He crossed to North Melbourne at the age of 30 and played another 6 seasons.

Kelvin Templeton (1980, 191cm) was a rare beast in Brownlow annals. He won it as a key forward. Until Malcolm Blight in 1978 no forward had won a Brownlow. Both Blight and Templeton won Coleman Medals as well, but not in the same year as their Brownlow. The only player to achieve the double in the same year has been Tony Lockett in 1987.

Another five years down the track and Brad Hardie (181cm) won the Brownlow playing as a small defender in his first season as a VFL footballer. Not something that's likely to happen these days - Wanganeen in 1993 was the last small defender to win it. Hardie only played two seasons for us before playing five with Brisbane and then a couple of games for Collingwood.

Another five years elapsed before we had another Brownlow in 1990, this time from Tony Liberatore, the only player to win the league's B&F medal in all three grades (U-19, Reserves, Seniors). That's a feat that will never be repeated because two of those grades have been abolished. Like his slightly taller modern day counterpart Caleb Daniel, Libba Sr (163cm) had to overcome people constantly telling him he was too short to make it. Determination and unshakeable self-belief can take you a long way.

Scott Wynd (201cm) won a Brownlow 2 years later in 1992 - but the age of the Brownlow winning ruckman was coming to an end. The only ruckman to win in over a quarter of a century since then has been Adam Goodes and some would say even he wasn't a genuine modern ruckman at only 191cm. Nat Fyfe is taller than Goodes.

Any discussion of Western Bulldogs Brownlows must include a special mention of Chris Grant who came desperately close to winning two Brownlows in the 1990s. He was the first player to poll the outright most votes in a season but be disqualified because of a suspension. His suspension was controversial and perhaps unprecedented because the umpires of the match didn't think it was a reportable offence but Ian Collins the AFL Director of Football Operations overrode them and Grant was rubbed out for one match.

Our last Brownlow medallist was Adam Cooney (187cm). He had a brilliant 2008 season and had already polled all 24 of his Brownlow votes when he cracked his knee cap in the first final we played that September. Sadly he was never the same player after that. Despite playing another 138 games the biggest tally of votes he got in any season after 2008 was 8. Like previous winners Dempsey, Templeton and Hardie, Adam Cooney didn't see out his playing days with the Bulldogs. He played a couple of seasons with Essendon before retiring.

One interesting piece of WB Brownlow trivia is that of our 10 Brownlow medal winners only 5 won the club B&F the same year (and Norm Ware only just scraped in there - he tied for B&F in 1941). Most of them did win a Footscray/WB B&F at some stage in their career. Oddly enough the only player to have won a Brownlow for the Dogs but never a club B&F was Adam Cooney.

YEAR	BROWNLOW MEDALLIST	CLUB BEST & FAIREST
1930	Allan Hopkins	Ivan McAlpine
1941	Norm Ware	Norm Ware / Arthur Olliver (tied)
1956	Peter Box	Don Ross
1960	John Schultz	John Schultz
1975	Gary Dempsey	Gary Dempsey
1980	Kelvin Templeton	Kelvin Templeton
1985	Brad Hardie	Doug Hawkins
1990	Tony Liberatore	Peter Foster
1992	Scott Wynd	Scott Wynd
2008	Adam Cooney	Daniel Cross

Great post Dogwatch. One other Bulldog story worthy of inclusion, imo, is the 1969 Brownlow involving Bulldog George Bisset. The 1969 Brownlow was won by Fitzroy's Kevin Murray with 19 votes with Bisset second on 18 votes. Bisset had a BOG against Carlton ( I think it was) in the final round of the season. Unfortunately he was reported for striking during the game. In those days the umpires were instructed not to give votes to a reported player due to the "fairest" aspect of the award. Bisset was acquitted at the subsequent tribunal hearing but the votes would not be recast and the Brownlow was gone. The then VFL subsequently changed the directive to not give votes to reported players but to late, no Charlie for Georgie. More injustice for the Dogs.