Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin deserve to cherish their Brownlow Medal moment
Rohan Connolly
November 13 2016
Few AFL players have been made to feel as undeservedly awkward as did St Kilda champion Robert Harvey on the night of the 1997 Brownlow Medal count.
Harvey walked to the stage to receive his honour as the first winner not to have polled the most votes. He had polled 26, to Western Bulldogs star Chris Grant's 27, but Grant was ineligible due to suspension, a controversial one at that.
Always humble, Harvey looked decidedly embarrassed as he took the microphone, calling it, "a hollow victory". "I have to say I'm really disappointed for Chris Grant ... I feel so sorry for him. I just think he's a wonderful player, one of the best players going around, and I think it's a terrible thing."
Fortunately, a spontaneous chorus from the floor of the function room made it apparent the football world didn't want Harvey to feel that way, that this moment should be one of justified pride in his achievement.
And you'd hope the reaction will be the same on Tuesday should the AFL Commission, reportedly split on the question, decide to award Jobe Watson's returned 2012 Brownlow to that season's joint runners-up, Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin.
However awkward Harvey felt, the former Hawthorn – now West Coast – veteran Mitchell and Richmond skipper Cotchin might arguably be feeling even more uncomfortable.
In 1997, the count was conducted with everyone at least knowing Grant could not win. Watson's ineligibility was never even officially decreed, though it is almost certain to be so on Tuesday. The Essendon captain's decision to return the medal last Friday was a sacrifice with the game's best interests at heart that effectively did the AFL Commission's dirty work for it.
It has come more than four years after the medal was won. And Mitchell and Cotchin have already had to buy into the debate, refusing the AFL's legally motivated but nonetheless tacky-looking attempt to seek their views on the matter.
However you dress it up, their confirmation as the joint winners of the 2012 Brownlow simply isn't going to have the same fanfare, not to mention universal acceptance, accorded Patrick Dangerfield two months ago, or indeed any other medallists. But that's hardly their fault.
The fact remains that both had outstanding seasons. Indeed, the 26 votes each polled in 2012 would have been enough to win them a Brownlow alongside West Coast's Matt Priddis had they been polled in 2014, or, in fact, eight of the 17 Brownlow counts this century.
Mitchell had four best-on-grounds and polled in 12 games in a season in which he also won the Hawks' best and fairest, averaging 27.2 disposals per game.
In a year in which his team won fewer than half its games and finished only 12th, Cotchin was still good enough to poll six best-on-grounds and in 11 games overall. He won Richmond's best and fairest and accumulated a still career-best average of 27.6 disposals. Either would be a deserving winner.
Those who believe no winner should be declared use the argument of tainted voting, that the 30 votes Watson received in 2012, or any other suspended Essendon players, for that matter, would need to be re-allocated.
But in 1997, Grant, who'd been effectively suspended by then-AFL football operations manager Ian Collins after being given the all-clear by three field umpires for a charge on Hawthorn's Nick Holland in round seven, polled 12 of his 27 votes in subsequent games.
Those votes were won by a player who even at that stage could not win the medal, denying vote-winning opportunities to those who could. Watson's ineligibility for 2012 is retrospective, but is the bottom line any different?
And speaking of retrospective legislation, shouldn't we also take into account the changing of the laws regarding the Brownlow Medal winner in 1981?
Prior to that, there could be only one winner each season, with ties sorted by a countback system for highest numbers of three votes.
In 1989, eight years after the rules were changed to allow joint winners (that we've had five times) the VFL decided to award retrospective Brownlow Medals to six players who had been beaten on a countback between 1924 and 1980, along with Herbie Matthews and Des Fothergill, who in 1940 couldn't be separated even by a countback, with neither receiving a medal.
Those had been the conditions of the time, yet the awarding of medals to that pair, Harry Collier, Allan Hopkins, Col Austen, Bill Hutchison, Verdun Howell and Noel Teasdale even all those years later (in Collier and Hopkins' case 59 years later) were given appropriate acclaim.
Just how the AFL intends doing similarly for Mitchell and Cotchin may be a lot more problematic. But like their predecessors who got their medals much later, and like Harvey, who won his despite someone else polling more votes, the football world, officials and fans alike, should do what it can to make their moment not one for churlishness, but one to cherish.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/sam-mitchell-and-trent-cotchin-deserve-to-cherish-their-brownlow-medal-moment-20161113-gso7hw.html
