The 2021 Brownlow Medal was the 94th year the award was presented to the player adjudged the best and fairest player during the Australian Football League (AFL) home-and-away season. For the second year in a row, due to the travel restrictions imposed as a result of the

COVID-19 pandemic in Australia The COVID-19 pandemic in Australia is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The first confirmed case in Australia was identified on 25 Januar ...

, the ceremony was not be held in Melbourne but instead a mainly made-for-television event, with players attending their nearest function in four different states. With Perth hosting the

2021 AFL Grand Final The 2021 AFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football match contested between and the at Optus Stadium in Perth, Western Australia, on Saturday 25 September 2021. It was the 126th annual grand final of the Australian Football League (A ...

, the main function was held at

Optus Stadium Perth Stadium, currently known as Optus Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is a multi-purpose stadium in Perth, Western Australia, located in the suburb of Burswood. It was completed in late 2017 and officially opened on 21 January 2018. The s ...

on Sunday, 19 September 2021.

Ollie Wines Oliver Wines (born 7 October 1994) is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the Port Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). Wines received a nomination for the 2013 AFL Rising Star award in Round 1 ...

of the Port Adelaide Football Club won the medal with 36 votes, equalling the record set by

Dustin Martin Dustin Martin (born 26 June 1991) is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). Martin was drafted by Richmond with the third pick in the 2009 national draft, a ...

in 2017 Brownlow Medal for most votes in a season under the 3–2–1 voting system.

Leading vote-getters

Voting procedure

The three field

umpires An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

(those umpires who control the flow of the game, as opposed to goal or boundary umpires) confer after each match and award three votes, two votes, and one vote to the players they regard as the best, second-best and third-best in the match, respectively. The votes are kept secret until the awards night, and they are read and tallied on the evening.

References

2021 Australian Football League season

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

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