Micro Noises 15 - Brownlow special
The 87-year drought is over!
Congratulations to JOBE WATSON, who took out the 2012 Brownlow Medal on Monday night, ahead of Trent Cotchin and Sam Mitchell. He becomes the second Watson to win the Medal, 87 years after the first, St Kilda's Colin. We're not sure if either of the dual Watsons like duelling banjoes but we reckon there's just a chance that the younger one does, given that's he's an anagram of TWO BANJOES. Perhaps slightly more pertinently, he's also an anagram of NO-SWEAT JOB, which is not a bad reflection of a man who gets things done on the footy field with a minimum of fuss.
What might have been
But things could have been oh so different last Monday night, especially if Adelaide's Scott Thompson and North Melbourne's Scott Thompson were in fact one and the same person. Had that (admittedly ridiculous) scenario eventuated, Scott Thompson would have polled 31 votes and pipped Watson for the Medal.
Our favourite teams
Some players seem to be at their best against specific teams. That certainly appeared to be the case with Richmond's Shaun Grigg, whose only two best-on-ground performances came against Melbourne, and Dane Swan, who clocked up three votes against Essendon on ANZAC Day, and again in Round 23.
Mr Consistent (1)
Dustin Fletcher managed just a solitary Brownlow vote this year, in Round 2 against Port Adelaide, but that was all he needed to make it eight consecutive seasons in which he has recorded a vote. In fact, of the 20 seasons Fletcher has played, only two have been voteless - the years ending in "4", 1994 and 2004. If Fletcher is planning to play on for several years yet, he might want to consider having a break in 2014.
Mr Consistent (2)
Meanwhile the man who played his 300th game in Sydney's Preliminary Final win over Collingwood last Friday, Jude Bolton, has polled votes in every season since 2003. In four of those 10 seasons, he's polled exactly 10 votes, including the last three seasons in a row! Now that's consistent.
Mr Consistent (3)
He kept us holding our collective breath until Round 23, but Saint Jason Gram came through with one Brownlow vote in the last game of the year, meaning that he has now polled votes in each of his last seven seasons. It's a fine effort by a man who, kilo for kilo, is one of the better Saints players of recent times. And we can't help but feel the AFL would be better off with another 999 Grams playing the game.
Mr Consistent (4)
It's only early days for West Coast's Andrew Gaff, but he's already displaying signs of long-term consistency. having scored 4 votes in each of his first two AFL seasons.
Mr Symmetry
Shane Mumford gets our Brownlow "Mr Symmetry" award for scoring a vote in each of the first and last rounds of the season - and none in between!
A funny thing happened on the way to the Brownlow
In fact, several funny things happened on the way to deciding this year's Medallist. Here's a few of them.
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When Hawthorn and Adelaide met in Round 3, Josh Gibson was awarded 3 votes, Brendan Whitecross got two votes, and Brent Guerra received one vote. Nothing funny about that on the surface of it, except that, for all three of those Hawks, it was the only game for the entire season in which they polled votes.
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Saint David Armitage posted votes only in rounds 5, 7, 9, 11 and 23. That seems a little ODD to us.
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Rounds 17 and 20 appeared to be tributes to the season's unsung heroes. In round 17, eight players - Andrew Mackie, Mitch Duncan, Jordan Lewis, Jason Porplyzia, Ben Hudson, Andrew Collins, Paul Stewart and Liam Anthony - scored their only votes for the year. Round 18 was somewhat more normal, with Michael Barlow being the only such case but things became strange again in Round 20, when there were no less than 10 players on the "only-votes-for-the-season" list: Beau Wilkes, Sam Blease, Daniel Talia, Brandon Matera, Will Hoskin-Elliott, Aaron Hall, Sharrod Wellingham, Bryce Gibbs, Shane Edwards and Sam Wright.
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Round 20 was also another game in which all players from the match scored their only votes of the year. The game was the Gold Coast win over GWS and the players were Matera, Hoskin-Elliott and Hall.
A 2020 vision: Conca, Talia and Fibonacci
Without knowing too much about the ancestry of Adelaide's Daniel Talia and Richmond's Reece Conca, we are certainly aware that both surnames can be fairly commonly found in Italy, as could the mathematician known as Fibonacci about 800 years ago. This fits neatly with the fact that both Talia and Conca have scored 0 votes and then 1 vote in each their first two AFL seasons. 0 and 1 of course represent the first two numbers of the famous Fibonacci Sequence, which begins with those two numbers, and then derives the next number in the sequence by adding together the previous two. Thus, the sequence is:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 and so on.
Should Conca and Talia continue on their merry Fibonacci way, they will be pretty good things to share the 2020 Medal with 34 votes each.
Brownlow postcode
Runner-up Sam Mitchell was gracious in defeat and had many post-count words of praise for Jobe Watson. And perhaps subconsciously, Mitchell predicted the Brownlow winner late in the season. His vote totals in rounds 18, 19, 20 and 21 were 2-0-3-0. And 2030 just happens to be the postcode of HMAS WATSON.
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