SEN Senior Broadcaster Gerard Whateley believes a slight alteration to the Brownlow Medal could alleviate an awkward situation where an ineligible player polls the most votes in the award.
Under the current system, if a player is suspended and misses a game of footy, they become unable to win the medal.
Nathan Fyfe finds himself in that boat this year as he likely leads the Brownlow race, but is ineligible after getting suspended for rough conduct on Collingwood’s Levi Greenwood.
Whateley believes a tweak to the award could allow Fyfe to remain eligible, but still punish the suspension.
“I wouldn’t change the Brownlow wholeheartedly, what I think I might look at is you mightn’t be the best player in every game, do you have to be the fairest player in every game?” Whateley told the AFL Nation pregame show.
“You can quarantine the votes a player got in the game where he ended up getting suspended because he wasn’t the fairest player that the day.
“We don’t ask a player to be the best player for 22 weeks, why do we ask him to be the fairest player for 22 weeks?
“That’s the only part I would look at, but the award has its quirks. I think we are staring down Fyfe having the most votes and being ineligible.”
Another factor on top of the player not being able to poll in the week he was suspended would be not polling in the weeks spent on the sidelines.
This would create a reasonable slap on the wrist that allows other players to vote in more games.
The player closest to Fyfe at the moment is likely Hawthorn midfielder Tom Mitchell.
“Fyfe furthered his lead in the Brownlow yesterday and Jack Macrae is going to miss a month, so we look back to Tom Mitchell,” Whateley said.
“I think Fyfe would’ve had about five votes on Mitchell and it’s going to take quite a bit of running down to catch him.”
What do you think? Should the award be tweaked?