Let’s start with the second point first. Just how would you devise or more workable and fairer system. You can’t decide to have one person at each game to monitor what goes on and then make the call. And how exactly would you find eight such people without any allegiance or bias yet qualified to make such a call.
So instead of one person at each game we go with two – that won’t work because you could finish with a deadlock. Well let’s go to three and have one with the power to make a casting vote. So that means we need 24 people to make up this panel each weekend. Each with an excellent, understanding of the game and without a hint of bias.
That would see us finish with a 24-man panel – if these people just happened to exist. The biggest review panel in the history of sport. But if you did find them it would be the only way it could work if you were to eliminate any doubts of accountability and bias.
I haven’t even mentioned the cost by the way. At a very rough guess I would suggest it would cost around a quarter of a million dollars.
And why all this discussion – apparently it is because the umpires have got it wrong in the past. Gary Wilson, Kevin Bartlett, Wayne Carey, Gary Ablett, Jack Clarke and Leigh Matthews didn’t win the medal and they were clearly the best players in particular seasons.
Some will tell you these blokes were too aggressive but Tony Lockett, Greg Williams and Dippa have all won a Brownlow.
Chris Judd, James Hird, Shane Crawford, Simon Black, Nathan Buckley and Mark Ricciuto all won a Brownlow and rightly so – the umpires got it right in those years. And what about Ian Stewart, Bob Skilton, Len Thompson and Malcolm Blight – all thoroughly deserved winners. And it appears to me that Haydn Bunton, Dick Reynolds and Bill Hutchison all deserved theirs as well.
Forget about it. I would say, looking through the records, that the umps are running at about 80% correlation to who was the popular choice – in other words you could not argue with eight out of 10. That is acceptable to my way of thinking. Let them get on with the successful judging of the Brownlow Medal.
