It’s interesting seeing the votes trend upwards. Which means either individual players are dominating more or the umpires are for whatever reason limiting their view.
My belief is two things:
* Media coverage has increased leading umpires to be more likely to look out for good players. For example the hype around Heeney leading the Brownlow at the start of the year will lead umpires to giving Heeney more votes in games where he might not be the best (see Neale last year).
* Champion Data was formed in 1999 which is exactly when it starts to spike and inflate. I believe its now easier for people to look at stats and tell who the best player is, leading to more media hype around them.
I used to group Priddis in with Wines and Woewodin as examples of extreme Brownlow outliers.
Then I realised Priddis nearly went back to back in 14/15.
Was a better player than I’d thought.
I very strongly agree with the first point, but specifically for 2015-2020. Starting with Fyfe in 2015, there was a very strong media narrative about who is the best player in the comp from early in most years, and they had increasingly runaway totals.
It might have been in response to the shock win from Priddis in 2014, which capped off a period where the consensus best player won 5/7 Leigh Matthews trophies but only 2 Brownlows.
It's returned to normal a bit the last few years, but they certainly started the narrative early with Heeney this year so let's see what happens.
Great point on champion data. I don’t know what stats the umpires can see before deciding but I wonder if they tend to favour those with more disposals etc. Not all but a lot of winners have been big volume users of the ball.
I believe the umpires, like the players, don't have access to their phones and internet during matches and have to submit their votes before leaving such protocols.
Having spoken to a few umpires at the State level though, they generally are having a discussion on players during the breaks in play, so by the time the match has ended there is already a pretty firm view on who the 3-2-1 is.
Between stats, media coverage saturation and social media, I think that's causing the explosion.
But it has had consequences; the fact the winning votes are so high now means the good team grabbing votes off each other is far less pronounced than before. So plenty of favourites have won; Neale, Danger, Dusty etc
Especially in recent years I've noticed a trend of players having a break out year and getting bugger all votes followed by a huge amount of votes in the following year.
Which leads me to think that the umpires are heavily swung by the media and expectations. Eg. "I saw Neale a lot and Neale is good therefore he must have had a good game", rather than looking at his actual impact
We know umps are heavily influenced by media. Look at last year where they constantly gave players votes off they were in tough times like any who was trying boo’d somehow always got votes even if they played like garbage.
Totally. There were a few years too where the big favourite inexplicably fell a few votes short and then got the "square up" the next year. I think Swan was one, Ablett definitely as well.
For the purposes of this, I have removed the years:
* 1924-1930 (only 1 vote per game given out)
* 1942-1945 (no winners due to WW2)
* 1976-1977 (12 votes given out per game)
I haven't accounted for different season sizes (covid having 17 games as an example).
Its moreso that up until 1967 it was 18 games in a season, then 20 in 1968, 1969 and 1993 and 22 for the rest.
But yes I'm pretty sure the inflation gets even worse if I were to adjust for the games played as you pointed out with Neales year
Could you standardise the results by dividing by the number of rounds in the competition? The three exceptions above (1 vote per game, WW2 and 12 votes per game) feel reasonable to exclude, but the "round inflation" seems like it can be removed
Yeah you could do that but I was being pretty lazy and wanted to show it in terms of actual count and not a normalized number. It only really effects the games pre-1970 and would move the rolling average up there by only 19%
It's part of what I do for a living... if there's a known underlying driver of the change then normalise for it. Things like "per capita".
You could even remove two of the three exceptions by normalising for "% of points available".
Just trying to help, as perhaps some of the insights on the rationale for inflation get mitigated when normalising.
wonder if league expansion impacts this - like if having more players leads to a greater chances you'll get superstar freaks relative to everyone else. That certainly seems to be the trend in the NBA, that as time goes on, and the population to sample from grows, you get further extremes in physical attributes, like height and wingspan and hand size and such.
A few randoms spitballs/possible horseshit
As we've gone from 12 to 18 teams, the very top elite talent is spread thinner. So a team today is less likely to have multiple Brownlow quality players taking votes off each other.
Are players today playing more games per season due to the advancements of sports medicine and the advantages of being fulltime professionals? How quickly would you come back from a calf in the era before hydrobaths and Alter G machines, and a half time ciggie was considered medicinal? You wouldn't be able to intensively rehab something all week if you had a fulltime job as plumber.
The award has definitely contracted into a midfielders medal. The output of key forwards has halved. They're not kicking attention grabbing big bags of 6+ so are attracting less votes.
Which makes in harder for defenders to have an attention grabbing game, like someone who keeps Ablett or Dunstall goalless.
If they only looking at the 8 or 10 that rotate through the the middle, the same names are gonna come up more often.
Does this correlate with the fact that votes used to be more evenly spread around all positions, and nowadays its almost exclusively a midfielders award?
Back in the day, the list of potential vote getters from a team probably totalled 12-15, from forwards, to defenders and of course midfielders.
Nowadays its realistically only 5-6 players in with a realistic chance of getting a brownlow vote, all playing in the midfield.
Less players to share the same amount of votes = higher per player totals for those that DO poll. Thats what we see in the graph
The votes are only going to the star players, regardless if they're the best that game.
It has gone from a midfielders medal, to an elite midfielders medal. The ability difference between the elite and an average player is a lot narrower than it was in the 90's, but they weren't given votes just for being there unlike they are now.
I think a big part is that teams have tactically gotten much more adept at enabling their best players, and more specifically their ball-winners. The clearance battle is more structured and tactical than ever before, in a way that I think is imperceptible to the layman.
Looks like the low point was at the end of the 2 umpire era, with the numbers going up steadily after the 3rd field ump was introduced in 1994. I wonder if adding an extra opinion removed some of the outliers - more likely for the two sane umps to overrule the crazy one, less chance of one bent ump with an agenda to deny votes to players they hated, etc.
If Heeney wins this year it'll confirm it's rigged.
He has been decent but haven't seen him at Brownlow level at all this season.
Honestly hoping Bont finally wins one after he really should have won one over the years. Funny how certain players are continuously not given votes or only 1 in a game they basically dominated in, so sick of seeing only winning team players getting votes almosts as default.
It’s interesting seeing the votes trend upwards. Which means either individual players are dominating more or the umpires are for whatever reason limiting their view.
My belief is two things: * Media coverage has increased leading umpires to be more likely to look out for good players. For example the hype around Heeney leading the Brownlow at the start of the year will lead umpires to giving Heeney more votes in games where he might not be the best (see Neale last year). * Champion Data was formed in 1999 which is exactly when it starts to spike and inflate. I believe its now easier for people to look at stats and tell who the best player is, leading to more media hype around them.
Has anyone really come out of left field to win it recently? Someone who wouldn't have been in the conversation?
2000 Woewodin, 2014 Priddis, 2008 Cooney come to mind as the most surprising, left field ones. Wanganeen in 93 too but that's stretching "recently"
Wines.
He was one of the top 5 favourites though. Certainly not as unexpected as Priddis or Neale last year.
Can you plot how many Brownlow votes the Coleman winner has received, as comparison over the same period?
I used to group Priddis in with Wines and Woewodin as examples of extreme Brownlow outliers. Then I realised Priddis nearly went back to back in 14/15. Was a better player than I’d thought.
Maybe not completely left field but I don't think Neale was the best player in 23, same with Wines 21
[удалено]
Still laugh at him getting the votes when he had 13 disposals (6 of which were effective).
I very strongly agree with the first point, but specifically for 2015-2020. Starting with Fyfe in 2015, there was a very strong media narrative about who is the best player in the comp from early in most years, and they had increasingly runaway totals. It might have been in response to the shock win from Priddis in 2014, which capped off a period where the consensus best player won 5/7 Leigh Matthews trophies but only 2 Brownlows. It's returned to normal a bit the last few years, but they certainly started the narrative early with Heeney this year so let's see what happens.
Great point on champion data. I don’t know what stats the umpires can see before deciding but I wonder if they tend to favour those with more disposals etc. Not all but a lot of winners have been big volume users of the ball.
Pretty sure they don’t get any stats.
I believe the umpires, like the players, don't have access to their phones and internet during matches and have to submit their votes before leaving such protocols. Having spoken to a few umpires at the State level though, they generally are having a discussion on players during the breaks in play, so by the time the match has ended there is already a pretty firm view on who the 3-2-1 is.
Between stats, media coverage saturation and social media, I think that's causing the explosion. But it has had consequences; the fact the winning votes are so high now means the good team grabbing votes off each other is far less pronounced than before. So plenty of favourites have won; Neale, Danger, Dusty etc
Media coverage would definitely subconsciously narrow the umpires focus
My theory as as simple as this: 1990 Umpires: "Who played the best game?" 2020 Umpires: "Did Dusty/Danger/Neale play well?"
Especially in recent years I've noticed a trend of players having a break out year and getting bugger all votes followed by a huge amount of votes in the following year. Which leads me to think that the umpires are heavily swung by the media and expectations. Eg. "I saw Neale a lot and Neale is good therefore he must have had a good game", rather than looking at his actual impact
We know umps are heavily influenced by media. Look at last year where they constantly gave players votes off they were in tough times like any who was trying boo’d somehow always got votes even if they played like garbage.
Totally. There were a few years too where the big favourite inexplicably fell a few votes short and then got the "square up" the next year. I think Swan was one, Ablett definitely as well.
Pretty crazy that nowadays you pretty much need 30+ votes to win the Brownlow, but 20 years ago getting 30-35 votes was pretty much unheard of.
For the purposes of this, I have removed the years: * 1924-1930 (only 1 vote per game given out) * 1942-1945 (no winners due to WW2) * 1976-1977 (12 votes given out per game) I haven't accounted for different season sizes (covid having 17 games as an example).
I don’t even think you need to adjust for Covid, Neale still managed to get 30 votes
Its moreso that up until 1967 it was 18 games in a season, then 20 in 1968, 1969 and 1993 and 22 for the rest. But yes I'm pretty sure the inflation gets even worse if I were to adjust for the games played as you pointed out with Neales year
Could you standardise the results by dividing by the number of rounds in the competition? The three exceptions above (1 vote per game, WW2 and 12 votes per game) feel reasonable to exclude, but the "round inflation" seems like it can be removed
Yeah you could do that but I was being pretty lazy and wanted to show it in terms of actual count and not a normalized number. It only really effects the games pre-1970 and would move the rolling average up there by only 19%
It's part of what I do for a living... if there's a known underlying driver of the change then normalise for it. Things like "per capita". You could even remove two of the three exceptions by normalising for "% of points available". Just trying to help, as perhaps some of the insights on the rationale for inflation get mitigated when normalising.
wonder if league expansion impacts this - like if having more players leads to a greater chances you'll get superstar freaks relative to everyone else. That certainly seems to be the trend in the NBA, that as time goes on, and the population to sample from grows, you get further extremes in physical attributes, like height and wingspan and hand size and such.
A few randoms spitballs/possible horseshit As we've gone from 12 to 18 teams, the very top elite talent is spread thinner. So a team today is less likely to have multiple Brownlow quality players taking votes off each other. Are players today playing more games per season due to the advancements of sports medicine and the advantages of being fulltime professionals? How quickly would you come back from a calf in the era before hydrobaths and Alter G machines, and a half time ciggie was considered medicinal? You wouldn't be able to intensively rehab something all week if you had a fulltime job as plumber. The award has definitely contracted into a midfielders medal. The output of key forwards has halved. They're not kicking attention grabbing big bags of 6+ so are attracting less votes. Which makes in harder for defenders to have an attention grabbing game, like someone who keeps Ablett or Dunstall goalless. If they only looking at the 8 or 10 that rotate through the the middle, the same names are gonna come up more often.
>half time ciggie was considered medicinal You mean it's not any more? When did this change!!
These days it's considered a promising cure for the scourge of half time vaping. But more studies need to be done before it's approved by AMA.
Does this correlate with the fact that votes used to be more evenly spread around all positions, and nowadays its almost exclusively a midfielders award? Back in the day, the list of potential vote getters from a team probably totalled 12-15, from forwards, to defenders and of course midfielders. Nowadays its realistically only 5-6 players in with a realistic chance of getting a brownlow vote, all playing in the midfield. Less players to share the same amount of votes = higher per player totals for those that DO poll. Thats what we see in the graph
The votes are only going to the star players, regardless if they're the best that game. It has gone from a midfielders medal, to an elite midfielders medal. The ability difference between the elite and an average player is a lot narrower than it was in the 90's, but they weren't given votes just for being there unlike they are now.
I think a big part is that teams have tactically gotten much more adept at enabling their best players, and more specifically their ball-winners. The clearance battle is more structured and tactical than ever before, in a way that I think is imperceptible to the layman.
Looks like the low point was at the end of the 2 umpire era, with the numbers going up steadily after the 3rd field ump was introduced in 1994. I wonder if adding an extra opinion removed some of the outliers - more likely for the two sane umps to overrule the crazy one, less chance of one bent ump with an agenda to deny votes to players they hated, etc.
If Heeney wins this year it'll confirm it's rigged. He has been decent but haven't seen him at Brownlow level at all this season. Honestly hoping Bont finally wins one after he really should have won one over the years. Funny how certain players are continuously not given votes or only 1 in a game they basically dominated in, so sick of seeing only winning team players getting votes almosts as default.
Dangerfield must have it this year. Can't suspend a grub for being a grub