The 1940

Brownlow Medal The Charles Brownlow Trophy, better known as the Brownlow Medal (and informally as "Charlie"), is awarded to the " best and fairest" player in the Australian Football League (AFL) during the home-and-away season, as determined by votes cast by ...

was the 17th year the award was presented to the player adjudged the

fairest and best In Australian sport, the best and fairest award recognises the player(s) adjudged to have had the best performance in a game or over a season for a given sporting club or competition. The awards are sometimes dependent on not receiving a suspensi ...

player during the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...

(VFL) home and away season.

Des Fothergill Desmond Hugh Fothergill (15 July 1920 – 16 March 1996) was an Australian rules footballer who played for Collingwood Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL) and for Williamstown Football Club in the Victorian Football Associatio ...

of the

Collingwood Football Club The Collingwood Football Club, nicknamed the Magpies or colloquially the Pies, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's elite competition. The club w ...

and

Herbie Matthews Herbie Matthews (20 November 1913 – 8 June 1990) was an Australian rules footballer who played for South Melbourne in the Victorian Football League (VFL). He was recruited to South Melbourne from suburban club Fairfield. His father, "Butch ...

of the South Melbourne Football Club both won the medal by polling thirty-two votes during the

1940 VFL season The 1940 VFL season was the 44th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 27 April until 28 September, and comprised an ...

. The count was the first tie since the introduction of the new voting system and tie-break in

1931 Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir I ...

: both players polled thirty-two votes, comprising seven 3-vote games, four 2-vote games and three 1-vote games. Under the rules at the time, the medal had neither another tie-breaker, nor a provision for more than one winner. One week after the count, the League opted to strike three medals: the true Brownlow Medal to remain in League hands, and Matthews and Fothergill each to receive a replica inscribed with the words "Tied for best and fairest" and "Presented to ... in recognition of being equal first for Brownlow Award in 1940". The 1940 Brownlow Medal count was the only tie for the award which could not be separated by tie-breakers between 1931 and 1980, after which the provision was added for tied players to be considered true joint winners. In 1989, the League elected to award retrospective Brownlow Medals to all players who had previously polled the most votes but failed to win on a tie-breaker; this included Fothergill and Matthews, who were awarded official Brownlow Medals to supersede their replicas. Matthews' and Fothergill's tallies of 32 votes set a new record as the highest under the medal's 3–2–1 voting system. This went on to be a long-standing record, held outright until it was tied by Robert Harvey in 1998, and finally beaten by

Dane Swan Dane Swan (born 25 February 1984) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Collingwood Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL).

(34 votes) in

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

Leading votegetters

References

1940 in Australian rules football 1940 {{AFL-stub