End the Dally M farce: Time to hand over voting on the NRL's best players to the only true experts

Nicho Hynes’ six Dally M Medal votes during the opening round made a joke of the award, and the people charged with making the decisions around just who were the most influential players on the field.

How two impartial judges could be so hoodwinked yet again by the lure of awarding points to a team’s talisman in halves, despite others doing more considerable damage on the day, is never-endingly concerning.

Sure, Hynes played a decent game, clocked up an important 21 tackles and did little wrong, yet it was far from a dominant and mouth-watering day that we have become used to seeing from one of the game’s best.

Far more important in the Sharks’ narrow 16-12 win over the Warriors were Siosifa Talakai and Ronaldo Mulitalo, who ran for a combined 297 metres, broke the line twice, assisted others in doing so on two other occasions, had hands in two tries during the lead-up, as well as both scoring four-pointers on the night.

They were excellent and along with the mountain of defensive work done by Blayke Brailey, Teig Wilton and Cameron McInnes in the engine room, all making in excess of 40 tackles, they were the key players in Cronulla opening up the 2024 season with a win.

Siosifa Talakai was influential in the Sharks’ opening win of the season. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Yet, somehow the points went the way of Hynes, and there is no disrespect intended to him. However, the Dally M Medal is the most notable and popular individual award dished out in Australian rugby league.

Personally, I don’t think it is too much to ask to at least have the matches adjudged accurately, instead of containing the obvious errors we saw in Round 1.

Flawed voting was not just restricted to the one match however, with many stunned by the vote given to Dolphins fullback Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow for an average display in a well beaten team in which he made a crucial and poor decision that led directly to a North Queensland try.

The public are no longer privy to who actually awarded the votes to both players. Let’s hope that whoever did was at least at the matches or watching elsewhere and we don’t have another Ruan Sims moment on the horizon, after the former Jillaroo was exposed for awarding votes without actually watching a match live in 2018.

Ruan Sims (far left) had glory days as a player but not as a Dally M judge. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Perhaps it is time to end the farce and admit that traditional vote winners such as Kalyn Ponga, Hynes, Tom Trbojevic and James Tedesco are clearer in the crosshairs of the judges than others.

All great players of course, yet the silent defensive work done by players in the centre of the ground deserves more credit, as does the efforts of a player who effectively shuts down a dangerous opponent in the backline; effectively blunting their attacking weapon and forging a path to victory.

Lest rugby league ever become Brownlow-like, where two-thirds of the players in the competition effectively have no chance of ever winning the AFL’s ‘highest individual honour’.

I would back the fans before ex-players, especially club members who watch every second and are looking at far more than the performance of the highest paid players on the roster.

Great players win the Dally M Medal, but the voting of it is seriously flawed. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

What if all football club members were entitled to register and permitted to vote if inside the stadium on game day? Once a membership pass is scanned the person would then become eligible to vote for the top three players from their club’s squad and the opposition.

We supposedly put a man on the moon some years back, so surely this rather low-tech challenge could be overcome.

Then, at the completion of the match, votes must be lodged within 30 minutes on the official Dally M website, one set up and accessed by fans with a secure password and username.

Once tallied, the NRL could immediately publish the results and come season’s end, an overall winner would be determined based on the will of the people and not duo’s of individuals that do not appear to be watching the matches as closely as they should.

Not only is there a strong incentive to attend matches and become club members, and therefore have a say in the Dally M Medal voting, the satisfying ownership of the award felt by the contributing fans could not be underestimated.

If you think this is a dopey idea. Think again of what happened over the weekend and the NRL’s necessity to defend the votes awarded. Could it really be any worse than what we already have?

I argue that Talakai and Mulitalo would have won more votes than Hynes in Round 1. Cronulla and Warriors members and fans aren’t stupid and the backline stars were instrumental in the win.

I would argue the same of most club members, people mature enough to award points to an opposition player when deserved and brutally honest in their opinions around the players that represent their team.

Crazy idea. A Dally M Medal voted by the people, for the people. You heard it here first.