Can only find top 10s. Very interesting prospect though. You would of course have to account for games played instead of years if you are trying to measure consistency.
Some Observations:
Number of times to poll over 10 votes:
Once:
Nic Martin
Devon Smith
Brent Stanton
Dylan Shiel
David Zaka
Twice:
Darcy Parish
Jobe Watson
5 times; (wow)
Hepp
Eight freakin times: (amazing)
Zach Merrett
I think it goes to show how far away Zach is from literally everyone else on the team, in terms of high performance and consistency of high performance.
The only one who comes close in this era was Hepps for a stretch of 6-7 years, where he polled above 10 votes 5x.
Obviously you can argue about how the Brownlow ignores defenders, (Both Crichton Defender winners Cale Hooker 2015 = 0 brownlow votes, Jordan Ridley 2020 = 0 brownlow votes) , but as a guide, it’s interesting.
Next I will try to combine it with Crichton data that I can find, to get a more balanced picture.
Ranking of current players, since 2012, sorted by POINTS PER GAME (x10), from BOTH BROWNLOW and CRICHTON, in order to give a ranking relative to games played.
Games played only includes games (and votes earned) playing for Essendon FC. (e.g. Shiel has 76 games played for EFC, I don’t include any games or votes he got for GWS)
Points for Brownlow are simply 1:1
Points for Crichton are weighted based on ranking order,. 10 to 1.
e.g. Finishing 1st in the Crichton is worth 10pt. Finishing 2nd is worth 9pt. Finishing 3rd is worth 8pt, and so on. Finishing 10th is worth 1pt. Finishing lower than 10th is not worth any pt.
The reason I did this was because Crichton points need to be weighted against Brownlow votes and this was the most fair way I could think of doing it.
So for instance, Heppell in 2014 gets 520pts in the Crichton voting, Ridley in 2020 gets 333pts voting, but on my table they both get 10pt for winning the Crichton.
I think it’s pretty clear but should be re-stated how phenomenally and consistently ELITE our captain Zach Merrett is.
He’s so far above the rest of our squad.
Heppell is under-rated / under-appreciated for how good he was for a stretch of at least 7 years, he was our top performer for quite a while.
Saad, Shiel, and Devon Smith both very solid performers on a per-game basis. Injury and durability and the high trade cost will always be debated but they performed better than most of the players around them.
Andy McGrath is well off the pace of where he should be, for someone who plays a lot of games he doesn’t get noticed much and maybe that’s a reflection on his output/impact not being significant.
Thanks mate, yes I agree , will be interesting to note if Zach ends up even below Heppell as he gets past his 11th/12th season and whether we will look back at Hepps more fondly than we do now.
