The

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 ...

(formally the Charles Brownlow Trophy) is an individual award given to the player judged

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 ...

in the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

(AFL) during the regular season. Determined by votes cast by the officiating umpires after each game, it is considered the highest honour for individual players in the AFL. The medal has been awarded every year since

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...

, with the exception of an intermission from 1942–1945 due to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. As of 2021, the Brownlow Medal has been awarded 108 times to 89 players in 94 medal counts.

Winners by season

Notes: As a mark of respect to soldiers fighting overseas in

, the medal was not awarded during 1942–1945.

Ineligible players who polled the most votes

A player guilty of an offence deemed worthy of a suspension by the AFL's disciplinary tribunal for serious on-field offences is ineligible to win the Brownlow Medal. Suspended players have tallied the highest number of votes for the award on three occasions. In the third of those cases,

Jobe Watson Jobe Watson (born 8 February 1985) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Essendon Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL). Watson, the son of three-time Essendon premiership champion Tim Watson, w ...

, who won in 2012, was later found guilty of breaching WADA's anti-doping code in the 2012 season, and was retrospectively ruled ineligible by the AFL Commission in November 2016.

Multiple winners

The following players have won the Brownlow Medal multiple times.

Voting systems

Since 1924, the voting system for the Brownlow has changed three times. From

1930 Events January * January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will be ...

1980 Events January * January 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaims a grain embargo against the USSR with the support of the European Commission. * January 6 – Global Positioning System time epoch begins at 00:00 UTC. * January 9 – ...

, a countback system was used to determine the winner in the event of a tie. In 1930, Judkins was awarded the medal as he had played in the fewest games. From 1931 to 1980, with the introduction of 3-2-1 voting, the winner was the player with the most three-vote games. In 1980, the countback system was removed, and in the event of a tie, players have been considered joint winners. In 1989, the then VFL awarded retrospective medals to all players who had tied but lost on countback prior to 1980.

Brownlow wins by clubs

Notes

External links

Brownlow winners list from AFL TablesBrownlow Medal Winners interactive visualization
{{Australian Football League Brownlow Lists of players of Australian rules football