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With eight rounds yet to go Nat Fyfe is the runaway favourite to win this year’s Brownlow medal. This is in spite of two incidents this season that could – and some argue should – have destroyed his chances.
Fyfe was only fined $1500 for his spoiling attempt gone wrong on Hawthorn’s Taylor Duryea. Back in Round 7 he was also only fined – just $1000 on that occasion – for tripping the Western Bulldogs’ Koby Stevens.
Nat Fyfe is having a charmed season.
Back in 2010 Chris Judd was similarly having a charmed season. In Round 13 he threw an elbow out at Fremantle’s Matthew Pavlich, who was on the ground next to him, and got him right on the cheek. The match review panel cleared him. No case to answer.
Judd won the Brownlow with 30 votes. This season, reports have Fyfe on 29 votes after Round 15, well on track to eclipse Dane Swan’s record of 35 in 2011.
Let’s pause for a second and remember what the Brownlow Medal is awarded for: the player who is fairest and best in the home-and-away season. Not just the best – which Judd arguably was in 2010 and Fyfe certainly is so far this year – the fairest and best.
When I think of fairest in regard to the Brownlow the following terms come to mind: honest , upright, honourable, trustworthy, above board and lawful. Basically, upstanding players. Clean players. Players who don’t bend the rules or push the boundaries wherever possible.
But is that what actually happens? While you do get players like Paul Kelly, Robert Harvey, Simon Black and Jim Stynes wearing ‘Chas’ at the end of the night, you also get players who are less than angelic. Basically, ‘fairest’ is now effectively decided by whether you got suspended during the season or not.
And now what players used to get suspended for can be adjudged to only be deserving of
a fine. If the match review panel believes that the incident was non-intentional and low impact then you just pay the clerk on your way out. Case dismissed. You are sort of guilty, but not guilty enough to rub you out for the Brownlow. That’s the way it has played out twice this season for Nat Fyfe.
But it wasn’t that way back in 1996 and 1997. In both those years the player that topped the votes at the conclusion of the Brownlow counts was not eligible due to paltry one-match suspensions that would now result in only a fine. Corey McKernan and Chris Grant are the only players this has happened to.
Just have a look at the video and judge for yourself if there is any real difference between them. Personally I believe the Judd incident is by far the worst.
The Chris Grant contact on Nick Holland in Round 7, 1997 is – to my mind – lower impact than Fyfe’s contact on Duryea. Corey McKernan’s knees into John Barnes could clearly be argued to be accidental and I believe it to be the most innocuous of the four.
Earlier this year, McKernan – after Fyfe was fined for tripping – raised the idea that, now that the rules have been changed, that perhaps he might get his Brownlow.
Nat Fyfe has been reported for tripping #AFLDogsFreo http://t.co/qFtO61V6JV
— AFL (@AFL) May 17, 2015
“It does really seem to me now the rules have changed, it’s different. We all agree the incident with Nat Fyfe, like I keep saying it’s great he gets off but in terms of where you stop with those trivial incidents, in my eyes it seems you’ve changed the nature of how you interpret the award.”
When McKernan’s point was raised with AFL chief Gillon McLachlan he was quick to swat it away: “The rules of the day were applied to Corey. They were rules.”
However, he then went on to make an excellent argument for why those rules of the day weren’t fair and why they are no longer the rules,
“We seem to have a situation with Nat Fyfe where I think Mark Evans last year worked through some really sensible and pragmatic changes to the MRP, and I think it’s working well this year.
“I think broadly, everyone feels it was the right outcome where I think the level of force meant Fyfe wasn’t suspended, and is eligible. I think if Nat Fyfe would have been suspended, which probably would have happened under last year’s rules, we probably would have had cars on fire outside AFL house.”
So let me get this straight, it’s great that changes have now been made so Nat Fyfe can still win the Brownlow but the changes shouldn’t apply retrospectively no matter how logical or fair we now think them to be because no one’s rioting about the injustice to Grant and McKernan?
Wouldn’t you just do it because it was the right thing to do and it didn’t harm a soul to do it?
I would suggest all that need be done is for Gillon to recognise that there is a clear precedent for awarding retrospective medals to Grant and McKernan and that he realise that it would be a good decision.
In 1980 it was decided that there would no longer be count backs to determine a winner when two or more players were tied. Rather each one would be awarded the medal. But they went further. They addressed the wrongs of the past and awarded ‘Chas’ retrospectively to all eight players in Brownlow history who had lost on count back.
As a result Harry Collier, Allan Hopkins, Des Fothergill, Herbie Matthews, Col Austen, Bill Hutchison, Verdun Howell and Noel Teasdale were all rightly awarded the Brownlow they had been denied by the rules of the day.
Sure it would have been great had they won it on the night of the count all those years before, but the main thing is that they were eventually awarded it. The mistakes of the past were rectified.
However, McLachlan argues that using this precedent along with the MRP changes to give Grant and McKernan the Brownlow is actually a double-edged sword.
“I’m not sure that it indicates we should be going back. What about all the guys who won Brownlows, who based on the new interpretation of head-high contact would probably need to lose them?”
Seriously Gillon? That’s your argument?
McLachlan is a qualified lawyer. Surely he understands the legal principle of double jeopardy that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction.
Why would that principle not apply here as well?
No one is suggesting for a minute that we go back and re-evaluate the old incidents to remove Brownlows from recipients. That would be ludicrous. However, surely we can right the wrongs of the past to award one.
What it takes is a big man to do it. A man of integrity. A man of ration and logic.
What harm can it possibly do to honour these two former stars of the game? It doesn’t take away from James Hird, Michael Voss or Robert Harvey, the other winners from ’96 and ’97. No one for a moment thinks that any of them are anything but 100 per cent worthy of their Brownlows. All three are behemoths of our game.
Mr McLachlan, please explain to me why you wouldn’t want to give Grant and McKernan their medals. I can see no valid arguments against it whatsoever.
Just get Voss, Hird and Harvey on stage at the beginning of this year’s count, call up McKernan and Grant, put the medals around their necks and toast their excellence.
What a great event. What a way to celebrate Aussie rules. What a good news story. The vast majority of people will almost certainly praise McLachlan for doing it.
And then when Nat Fyfe gets his medal at the end of the night there will be no hypocrisy or controversy. I just can’t see a downside…
It’s a total no brainer.