Lachie Neale is the 2023 Brownlow Medallist – but he was far from the only winner out of the most thrilling edition of the AFL’s night of nights in many a year.
With a long list of contenders and virtually nothing splitting them all evening – by the last round, five players will still in contention to take home the coveted gong – the 2023 count was arguably the most exciting in history, with the result still in dispute right up until Neale was awarded three votes in the final match to be announced by league CEO Gillon McLachlan.
But the fans – and of course, Neale – were far from the only winners out of Brownlow night: from new Mark of the Year victor Harry Himmelberg and Goal of the Year recipient Will Ashcroft, plus Sam Docherty’s inspirational claiming of the Jim Stynes Community Leadership Award, there were plenty more stars of the game who could head home from Crown well pleased with how the night panned out.
Here are the winners and losers from the 2023 AFL Brownlow Medal
Lachie Neale
I mean… he won the night, after all.
Sure, the Brisbane champion was a surprise winner, and a controversial one too in some corners (including my own). But all the same, while Neale’s stats might not have been as eye-watering as in some of his other seasons at the Lions, I’m not sure he’s ever been more impactful on games than in 2023.
Still a clearance machine, still a stoppages beast, Neale might have averaged his fewest disposals in a non-2020 season in nearly a decade, but almost 27 touches a game is still a serious effort.
As for the widely reposted comment from SEN mid-year that Neale was, in a month-long span of footy, the 284th-ranked midfielder in the game… it’s worth noting that that came after Round 21, and represents four weeks where he polled exactly 0 votes.
From there, he lifted for seven votes in the last three rounds, including two best-ons in the last two, to claim his second Charlie, even with that dry month.
Sure, Neale didn’t make the All-Australian team, and nor was he a surprise omission. He was fifth for coaches votes, and had what many consider to be a just okay season by his extraordinary standards – it certainly wasn’t a patch on his all-conquering 2020 that brought with it his first Brownlow.
Whether it was a Brownlow-worthy season is up for debate: but this is still a champion of footy, with a decent chance of joining Dustin Martin as the only players in history to claim the Brownlow-Norm Smith double on Saturday.
Lachie Neale with the 2023 Brownlow Medal. (Photo by Albert Perez/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The AFL.com.au Brownlow Predictor
Plenty of eyebrows were raised when the AFL’s official media arm locked Neale in as its predicted Brownlow winner.
“There’s no way Neale is winning it. Be lucky to poll in the top 10” was one poorly-aged response, while others claimed it was ‘intentionally misleading’, or that the Lions had had ‘an average year’.
But not only were they bang on with their winner, but they were only one off his eventual tally – a fair effort!
The rest of the top group were quite close as well: Nick Daicos and Zak Butters were only two votes short of their eventual tallies, Marcus Bontempelli finished one ahead and Petracca one behind. Overestimating Jordan Dawson and Tim Taranto were about their most egregious mistakes.
It’s worth a tip of the cap – especially from me, someone whose predicting skills this year have been… grim. But more on that later.
Noah Anderson
Every year there’s a player who shocks everyone by making a serious run for the Brownlow from nowhere, and 2023 had Noah Anderson.
Perhaps the best Brownlow bolter since Angus Brayshaw in 2018 – who famously finished third despite not even getting an invite – Anderson ended up equal ninth after polling in just one of the Suns’ last nine games, and only once under caretaker coach Steven King.
But before the byes, he was right up among the leading contenders, polling 13 votes in a five-week stretch to race, out of nowhere, into the top tier.
With six three-vote efforts, only Neale, Nick Daicos, Butters and Jack Viney (all with seven) had more best on ground games this year than the 22-year old.
Anderson, like Neale, missed All-Australian selection this year, but if you needed a sign that this young Sun is a rising star of the game, this was it.
Andrew Phillips
The journeyman ruckman, who retired after Round 24, must have thought he’d end his 11-year AFL career without a single Brownlow vote.
But in one of the biggest shocks of the night, Phillips wouldn’t just break his duck in the Dons’ famous win over Melbourne in Round 5… he’d earn the maximum three for his 12-disposal, six-mark, two-goal performance.
Plenty of surprised footy fans took to social media to express their disbelief – especially given Phillips received 0 coaches votes – but having watched that match and written about it in depth at the time, I’m glad the big fella received some reward for an excellent, underrated game.
Along with Sam Draper, I wrote, Phillips ‘ruled the skies in Essendon’s forward line. Harrison Petty and Adam Tomlinson were totally outmatched… they’re now extremely competent as forwards, while having the double effect of running Brodie Grundy absolutely ragged.’
I most definitely thought Draper was the better of the two, saying ‘this is a serious footballer developing before our eyes’, but who can begrudge a retiring ruckman a three-vote effort in a midfielder-dominated award?
Enjoy retirement, Flip.
The Bont
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
That’s now three seasons in which Marcus Bontempelli has entered Brownlow night among the heavy favourites.
For the second time in three years, alongside 2021, he finished second, while in 2019 he was heavily backed only to finish equal seventh as teammates Jack Macrae and Josh Dunkley ate into his votes.
Scott Pendlebury and Joel Selwood might be the best modern midfielders to never win a Brownlow, but with another 29 votes taking his tally to 169 in his 10-year career – already 23rd all time, and third of Bulldogs behind Scott West (175) and Gary Dempsey (246) – and with the third-highest votes-to-game ratio (0.83) for anyone with more than 150 career votes (behind Patrick Dangerfield and two-time winner Nat Fyfe), the Dogs captain is fast joining that company.
A two-time AFL Players Association MVP, and with a Coaches Association win under his belt as well, Bontempelli’s standing in the game among peers and supporters alike is undisputable, even if he never claims the biggest prize of all.
Still, it’d be nice if he did win one at some point… and with the 2010s already the first decade ever without a Bulldogs victor since the 1920s, it feels overdue for both player and club!
Kane Cornes
Remember when Kane Cornes said Tim Taranto wasn’t even in the top 150 players in the game?
Cornes made that claim on SEN on May 4 this year, in the lead-up to Round 8.
Within a month, Taranto had responded with four consecutive best afield efforts from Rounds 11-14 – and as it proved on Brownlow night, the maximum three votes every single week.
That was enough to see the Tiger storm into equal third in the voting, equal with Nick Daicos – and while he’d poll just three more votes for the rest of the night as his season tapered off, it’s fair to say he’d already made a statement.
Sure, he was nowhere near winning… but 19 votes is nothing to be sniffed at from the games 151st-best player!
And that claim that Christian Petracca might no longer be considered a truly elite player… well, that didn’t age too sharply either.
The All-Australian selectors
After one of the most widely acclaimed 22s ever, there was very little to complain about with this year’s All-Australian team – and the footy world seemed to know as such with its reaction when the team was announced earlier this month.
There were scarcely any snubs and even fewer undeserving names in the team of the year – a job well done, it seems.
But it always looks a little silly when the Brownlow Medallist ends up being someone who didn’t make the cut – and for the first time since 2014, that’s what happened with Neale’s win this year.
It’s just the fourth time since the All-Australian team became a serious accolade in the mid-1990s that the Brownlow winner has missed out on a spot – and Neale’s is a particularly strange case.
Matt Priddis in 2014 only won because Gary Ablett wrecked his shoulder with seven rounds to go – missing double the games Nick Daicos was out for this season – while Sam Mitchell in 2012 only received his medal four years later after Jobe Watson had it stripped for his involvement in the Essendon supplements saga.
Then there’s Shane Woewodin in 2000, one of the most surprising and derided winners in Brownlow history – in fairness, my view may be clouded by years of childhood spent listening to my dad explain how Scott West was robbed blind.
Neale, as a past winner and undisputed superstar of the game, is a slightly different had case from those three other non-AA recipients, and is pretty clearly the best footballer of the foursome.
Still, the selectors of the team of the year shouldn’t feel that foolish: I don’t think many people had Neale as 2023’s best player, or even in the top ten (I certainly didn’t!)
Me
Okay, I might have written that Nick Daicos could get to 40 Brownlow Medal votes on Sunday night… only to see him fall nearly a third short.
Whoopsie.
In fairness, I wasn’t the only person to think the younger Daicos was unlucky to miss out on votes in several games, most notably a 38-disposal, two-goal effort against Brisbane in Round 4 that should at least have netted him a token one.
But 40 was still a bit much – as was my unwritten but privately held belief he could be on 18 votes after six rounds (he’d get to 13). Clearly, the umpires didn’t get into the Daicos hype quite as much as I did.
It’s been a rubbish year from me on the predicting front: I had Collingwood and Port Adelaide missing the finals at the start of the year, tipped Richmond for the top four and GWS for the bottom four, said repeatedly during the year that you were silly if you thought Geelong weren’t making the eight, had Port making my grand final on the eve of September, and finished 16 behind the winner of our expert tipping competition. That’s honestly hard to do.
So with that in mind… Collingwood to win the grand final by nine points. Sorry, Magpies supporters (and you’re welcome, literally everyone else in Victoria).
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