THREE’S A CROWD

Last night, of course, was one of football’s biggest nights of the year. The AFL Brownlow Medal count.

The culmination of the umpire’s votes to find out who was the Fairest and Best – not Best and Fairest as most people say – in the AFL in 2003 during the Home and Away games.

A big TV night for Channel Nine who of course won’t be broadcasting the Grand Final. That will be on Channel Ten.

But last night nearly half of all people watching TV in Melbourne were watching the Brownlow count. The audience peaked at close to one million people.

Before that ceremony the Nine Network milked it with an Oscar-style half-hour red carpet arrival programme.

It was excruciating. Host Gary Lyon was so badly shot he looked like a muppet. Livinia Nixon looked like she had borrowed her hairstyle from Davy Crockett. Shane Crawford’s hair had more fashionable spikes than a porcupine.

And the parade of the blonde handbags on the footie stars’ arms confirmed Hinch’s Law yet again:

The shorter the skirt, the deeper the cleavage, the rougher the head. Except for Sandra Sully.

But back to the Brownlow. For the first time in 73 years it was a three-way tie. Collingwood captain Nathan Buckley, the Adelaide Crows’ Mark Ricciuto and young Sydney Swan Adam Goodes all scored 22 points.

Ben Cousins from West Coast, Hawthorn skipper Shane Crawford and Port Adelaide’s Gavin Wanganeen finished only one point behind on 21.

In one of the tightest votes in years there were about ten players who could have got won with a couple of rounds to go.

And the three-way split, to be honest, left me a mite disappointed. I thought if there wasn’t a way that there could be a count back of some sort to determine one winner.

Like, give it to the player who had the most Best On Ground three votes throughout the season.

And then I went to work today and was reminded that’s what they used to do until 1981.

Then it was decided that it was unfair that a player could have scored one point in 18 games and end up tied with a player who scored three points each in six games.

From memory they even went back years later and gave belated Brownlow Medals to players who had tied and been robbed by the count back system.

But surely there must be a way to single one player who is deemed the Fairest and Best in the game.

Not that last night’s three victors will be complaining. Especially Buckley who got his maths wrong in the final round count and thought he had been beaten – again.

But even Adam Goodes today made a Freudian slip that showed he thought a three-way split was wrong.

He referred to himself in a news report as a "runner-up". And then corrected himself.

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002