Roast Why I’ve always thought AFL Awards are bRoken

[Spook]

Best and fairest isn't great either as all clubs have their own criteria for it and I have lost count of the amount of times the Swans Best and Fairst wasn't the best player for our season.

Don’t all clubs F&Bs get voted by the coaching group? I trust coaches more than anyone else.
What years do you disagree with?

2024 - Isaac Heeney
2023 - Errol Gulden
2022 – Callum Mills
2021 – Luke Parker
2020 – Jake Lloyd
2019 – Dane Rampe
2018 – Jake Lloyd
2017 – Luke Parker
2016 – Josh Kennedy
2015 – Josh Kennedy

 

[MC Extra Dollop]

AFLCA MVP is the only award I have any interest in.

The problem with the AFLCA player of the year is that (unlike the other primary league player of the year awards) there is a running tally and leader board available and I have little doubt that most - if not all - coaches would have trouble resisting a little skew on their late season votes if a player from their club is in the running.

 

[jakefooty23]

Hodge bit stiff to be honest. Would have been $1.03 favourite to win the best drink driver award if there was one..

 

[Spook]

The problem with the AFLCA player of the year is that (unlike the other primary league player of the year awards) there is a running tally and leader board available and I have little doubt that most - if not all - coaches would have trouble resisting a little skew on their late season votes if a player from their club is in the running.

If you go back and check you’ll find that isn’t the case. There is a fairly good correlation between both coaches for a given game as well.

 

[TheOptimum18]

Here's another one to add to the list.

I have no idea what the criteria is, but a 28 year old player winning an award titled the "Best Young Player" does not pass the sniff test.

 

[RCAB]

Here's another one to add to the list.

I have no idea what the criteria is, but a 28 year old player winning an award titled the "Best Young Player" does not pass the sniff test.

He might be able to play in the Legends Game soon

 

[The Feeder Club]

Here's another one to add to the list.

I have no idea what the criteria is, but a 28 year old player winning an award titled the "Best Young Player" does not pass the sniff test.

He is young for a Geelong player

 

[RCAB]

Daicos taking the Leigh Matthews Trophy in 2025 just shows how far ahead this award is for doing the bare minimum.

If he doesn't win the Brownlow this year, throw the award in

 

[windyhill]

One player a year wins the Brownlow. Therefore, many excellent players will miss out to other excellent players.
If you really wanted to argue it was a broken award, you would imagine using a ho hum player who should never have been anywhere near the Brownlow podium to mount your argument
Like, I don't know...

View attachment 2409614

Beat me to it.

 

[Cyclops]

Coaches Association Award the best measure, bravo Bailey Smith, not my favourite player but what a massive effort to become a vital matchwinner after recovering mentally and physically at the new club.

Daicos well liked by other players, and not a disgrace as the AFLPA MVP.

Prepare for another "cumulative Brownlow" like Cripps last year, someone like Jeremy Cameron or Heeney.

Beat me to it.

One of the greatest ever wingmen? Surely you jest. Lived in the company of absolute champions like Neagle, Hawkins and Flower. Definitely not the fairest, I agree that's a joke, but one of the absolute best. As under rated as Leigh Matthews is over rated these days.

Also The Feeder Club states "One player a year wins the Brownlow", then posts a picture of Dipper...

 

[Lunchtime]

Coaches Association Award the best measure, bravo Bailey Smith, not my favourite player but what a massive effort to become a vital matchwinner after recovering mentally and physically at the new club.

Daicos well liked by other players, and not a disgrace as the AFLPA MVP.

Prepare for another "cumulative Brownlow" like Cripps last year, someone like Jeremy Cameron or Heeney.


One of the greatest ever wingmen? Surely you jest. Lived in the company of absolute champions like Neagle, Hawkins and Flower. Definitely not the fairest, I agree that's a joke, but one of the absolute best. As under rated as Leigh Matthews is over rated these days.

Also The Feeder Club states "One player a year wins the Brownlow", then posts a picture of Dipper...

I wouldn't have any issues at all with Jeremy Cameron winning the Brownlow, if it were to happen.

 

[Underarm]

I wouldn't have any issues at all with Jeremy Cameron winning the Brownlow, if it were to happen.

which it absolutely wont. will be lucky to break double digits.

 

[QuietB]

The only award that matters is the Premiership Cup.

The end.

 

[Cripps 'n' Blue Bloods]

Here's another one to add to the list.

I have no idea what the criteria is, but a 28 year old player winning an award titled the "Best Young Player" does not pass the sniff test.

It's literally just based on an outstanding first 2 seasons in the league. That's it. No age criteria at all.
They need to either change the name or change the criteria.

Interestingly, this award has been around for 23 years. In 20 of those years, the award has been won by:
19yo x 7
20yo x 13 (2021 was tied by 2 x 20yo)
21yo x 1

The other 3 times?
2018 - Tom Stewart - 25 - Cats
2019 - Tim Kelly - 25 - Cats
2025 - Shaun Mannagh - 28 - Cats

 

[bzparkes]

"Leigh Matthews never won a Brownlow!!!"

Maybe if he wasn't sucker-punching blokes in the back of the head, he'd have had a shot at an award titled best and fairest.

 

[Mr Meow]

Coaches Association Award the best measure, bravo Bailey Smith, not my favourite player but what a massive effort to become a vital matchwinner after recovering mentally and physically at the new club.

Daicos well liked by other players, and not a disgrace as the AFLPA MVP.

Prepare for another "cumulative Brownlow" like Cripps last year, someone like Jeremy Cameron or Heeney.


One of the greatest ever wingmen? Surely you jest. Lived in the company of absolute champions like Neagle, Hawkins and Flower. Definitely not the fairest, I agree that's a joke, but one of the absolute best. As under rated as Leigh Matthews is over rated these days.

Also The Feeder Club states "One player a year wins the Brownlow", then posts a picture of Dipper...

Prepare for forwards to start winning Brownlows? I wouldn't have thought so.

 

[Andyy]

I've always thought AFL awards were stupid. Not just flawed... fundamentally broken.


Start with the Brownlow Medal. The award that's supposedly for the "best and fairest"... yet somehow some of the greatest players ever never won it. Leigh Matthews, Wayne Carey, Gary Ablett Sr, Jason Dunstall, Luke Hodge. You’re telling me that none of those blokes were ever the “best” player in a season? Pull the other one.

I guess that's where 'fairest' comes in. Some of those blokes got suspended often. But I agree nonetheless.

And don’t get me started on the voting system. A 3-2-1 system decided by umpires who already have the hardest job in footy and aren’t even watching off-ball movement. So you get a midfielder who racks up 28 handballs in a loss getting 3 votes while someone else kicks 10 goals in a win gets the same 3 votes, and sometimes 1 vote. Or none. And all of it void if a player gets suspended, even if they played like an actual god for the rest of the year.

I think the coaches votes should be included to remove umpire bias/F up, but we'd need to find a way to ensure no coach bias too.

Then there’s the All-Australian team, which (like the Brownlow) only covers the home-and-away season. Just let that sink in.

Absolute joke, every stuffing year. It's like employee of the month - there's several undeserving ass lickers every year.

The entire finals series (the actual reason we play the season) counts for nothing in these awards. 100% of the weighting goes to the lesser part of the competition.

I guess that makes it fair for good players in ordinary teams.

Example? Let’s go back to 1991. Hawthorn not only won the flag, they belted top of the ladder West Coast (162% season) in the grand final, and also beat them convincingly in a QF in Perth.


And this wasn't just a fluke for Hawthorn that year, they'd made seven of the last eight grand finals. And yet... not one Hawthorn player made the All-Australian team that year. Meanwhile, some clubs that didn’t even make a dint in the finals had four guys in the side. I mean… what?


Let’s go broader. The voting is done by a tiny little cabal of people. No wisdom of the crowd or representation of the wider AFL community. Just a select few whose biases and blind spots dictate everything.

Only award that regularly gets it right is the Leigh Matthews Trophy, voted by the players. Still not perfect, but at least it uses mass input. Same goes for most other sports. Basketball, soccer, NFL, journalists and coaches who actually watch games do the voting. But here, because the media’s cooked and the AFL’s paranoid about narrative manipulation, we just let it be decided by… umpires and selectors? Okay then.

Good aware IMO.

And let’s end on this irony. The only AFL tradition that actually reflects how much we value the grand final, is the Premiership Medal. But it only gets handed out to the players who participate on grand final day.

Long-standing argument this one re: players on the day vs whole season vs finals series etc. I don't have the right answer, but I think if you contribute in the finals series that should matter. Getting a medal for never pulling on the boots would be embarrassing.

Think about that...

AFL doesn’t let the Brownlow count finals. It doesn’t let the All-Australian selectors consider finals. But we only give the most coveted medals for one game, the last one, a tradition started by Channel 7 around 1977?

So the logic is what? The rest of the season (including qualifying finals, semi finals, prelims) mean less than the last Saturday in September? But the awards we actually base the season around ignore that final month entirely?


Is it no wonder none of these medals feel like they really encapsulate greatness?



Tldr of my rant:

• AFL awards aren’t just flawed, they’re broken.

• Brownlow Medal: decided by umpires with a dodgy 3-2-1 system, ignores finals, and disqualifies suspended players → many all-time greats never won it.

• All-Australian team: also ignores finals, leading to absurd snubs (e.g. 1991 Hawthorn flag side with no representatives).

• Voting is controlled by a tiny group, not fans, players, or broader experts.

• Leigh Matthews Trophy (players’ vote) is the only award that consistently makes sense.

• Big irony: the Premiership Medal is the only award tied to the grand final (the most important part of the season), yet all these "respected" awards completely disregard finals.

Bottom line: AFL awards don’t actually measure greatness, they’re built on inconsistent or outdated logic.

I guess a lot of them are participation awards. Most players want that premiership medallion.

 

[TheOptimum18]

It's literally just based on an outstanding first 2 seasons in the league. That's it. No age criteria at all.
They need to either change the name or change the criteria.

Rename it to "Best Newcomer" then. At least that would make more sense.

 

[Mr Meow]

Rename it to "Best Newcomer" then. At least that would make more sense.

It does need to be renamed.

Note that when the award debuted in 2003, the idea of players being recruited and starring in their first seasons of AFL at 26+ years old was absurd.

The principle behind the award was always a player's first two AFL seasons after being drafted. It was just assumed back then that this would always be 18-21 year olds.

 

[Osho]

It's what you get when umpires have to pat head and circular tummy rub at the same time. It's not their fault.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

The AFLCA award is probably the one with the most credibility I think. It’s done game on game, so actually rewards immediate performance.

It’s also voted by those closest and most engaged in the game.

The AFLPA award is basically just done on reputation. Players just vote at the end of the year. And plenty of them openly admit they don’t even really like footy or watch it, which doesn’t make them great judges.

With the coaches, you’re getting the biggest footy nerds there are.

 

[RCAB]

The AFLCA award is probably the one with the most credibility I think. It’s done game on game, so actually rewards immediate performance.

AFLCA votes are useful, but they’re still bottlenecked by two coaches, under an artificial 5–4–3–2–1 system. A 10/10 game from a star in Round 3 isn’t directly comparable to a 10/10 game in Round 12, but the system pretends they are. Every game spits out a fixed set of votes, even in a match where nobody really dominated. That warps things.

It’s also voted by those closest and most engaged in the game.

The AFLPA award is basically just done on reputation. Players just vote at the end of the year. And plenty of them openly admit they don’t even really like footy or watch it, which doesn’t make them great judges.

With the coaches, you’re getting the biggest footy nerds there are.

The wisdom of crowds doesn’t require experts. The bean-jar studies show exactly that the average of lots of guesses, even from people with no special insight, converges remarkably close to the truth. The key is the more independent inputs, the more accurate the aggregate.

Forget be got the most votes, Bailey wouldn't even be on the top 3 most important players on the field for Geelong. Holmes, Cameron and Dangerfield are all more important.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

The wisdom of crowds doesn’t require experts. The bean-jar studies show exactly that the average of lots of guesses, even from people with no special insight, converges remarkably close to the truth. The key is the more independent inputs, the more accurate the aggregate.

Forget be got the most votes, Bailey wouldn't even be on the top 3 most important players on the field for Geelong. Holmes, Cameron and Dangerfield are all more important.

Says who?

You're dealing with something subjective here. Beans in a jar is an objective exercise and there is a "truth".

With this, there isn't.

Who is the best player? You can't tell me objectively and definitively. Because "best" means something different to everybody. Particularly in a sport where you have 44 players simultaneously attacking and defending in very different roles across an enormous field of play.

So no matter what, it's always going to be a case of opinion without a true answer.

There's one true objective goal in football - winning games. The people most concerned with that and closest to it are the coaches.

So I'll take their opinions over a million others who aren't actually focused on it, and are impacted by endless biased noise.

 

[Mr Meow]

Says who?

You're dealing with something subjective here. Beans in a jar is an objective exercise and there is a "truth".

With this, there isn't.

Who is the best player? You can't tell me objectively and definitively. Because "best" means something different to everybody. Particularly in a sport where you have 44 players simultaneously attacking and defending in very different roles across an enormous field of play.

So no matter what, it's always going to be a case of opinion without a true answer.

There's one true objective goal in football - winning games. The people most concerned with that and closest to it are the coaches.

So I'll take their opinions over a million others who aren't actually focused on it, and are impacted by endless biased noise.

FWIW I'd have Cameron, Holmes and Smith in a three-way tie for importance right now. Dangerfield, like Stewart, is still important but not at the absolute top of the Geelong tree anymore.

 

[GoldbergsGold]

The Brownlow is literally "The Umpires Midfielders Award", there's no merit to it because nameless umpires who 99.9% of the time have never played AFL. And if that's not absurd enough, they're just making up scores for players for only 5 minutes of reflection after a game, not even thinking much about it. It's actually coaches or ex-players observations that hold real merit and players value even if there were no award for that. The players couldn't careless in reality what umpires think of their performance if there was no medal involved, so it's totally bizarre they're judging the MVP award.