The Brownlow Medallist's Club Rarely Wins the Flag

We took every Brownlow medallist and their club from the list of Brownlow Medal winners, the premiers and runners-up from the list of VFL/AFL premiers, and the final home-and-away ladder of every season from 1990 to 2026 from the season pages, such as the 2026 AFL season. Joint winners count as separate medals, so the 37 counts since 1990 produced 41 medallists.

How often the Brownlow medallist's club wins the premiership

Six times in 41 medals since 1990: Gavin Wanganeen with Essendon in 1993, Jason Akermanis and Simon Black with the Brisbane Lions in 2001 and 2002, Jimmy Bartel and Gary Ablett Jr. with Geelong in 2007 and 2009, and Dustin Martin with Richmond in 2017. The nine seasons since then are the longest run without one since 1990; the two previous gaps lasted seven seasons, 1994 to 2000 and 2010 to 2016.

Over the medal's whole history the rate is lower still. From 1924 to 2026 the Brownlow was awarded 113 times in 99 counts, and the medallist's club won the flag 14 times, 12 percent of medals. The 30 seasons from 1960 to 1989 produced only two: Ian Stewart with St Kilda in 1966 and Robert DiPierdomenico with Hawthorn in 1986.

The fairest and best award matches the title far less often than the NBA's MVP does. The NBA MVP's team won the championship in 24 of 71 seasons, 34 percent. Being the best team in the home-and-away season is also a better predictor: the AFL minor premier won the flag in 11 of 33 seasons since 1994.

Where Brownlow medallists' teams finished on the ladder

Most medallists play in good sides. Thirty-three of the 41 since 1990 played for a finalist, 80 percent, and 24 for a top-four team, 59 percent. The most common ladder position was second, with 11 medals, and the club finished first or second 17 times.

Even playing for the minor premier is no guarantee. Six medallists since 1990 played for the club that finished top, and two of those clubs won the flag: Essendon in 1993 and Geelong in 2007. The other four, St Kilda in 1997, Collingwood in 2011, Hawthorn in 2012 and Fremantle in 2015, all fell short.

Fourteen medallists since 1990 reached the grand final with their club, 34 percent, and eight of them lost it, most recently Lachie Neale with the Brisbane Lions in 2023. Eight more played for clubs that missed the finals:

• Gary Ablett Jr., Gold Coast, 2013: 14th of 18 at 8-14, the lowest finish for a medallist's club since 1990.
• Nat Fyfe, Fremantle, 2019: 13th at 9-13. Paul Kelly, Sydney, 1995, and Trent Cotchin, Richmond, 2012: both 12th.
• Shane Crawford, Hawthorn, 1999, Matt Priddis, West Coast, 2014, and Patrick Cripps, Carlton, 2022: all ninth, one place outside the eight.
• Tony Liberatore, Footscray, 1990: seventh of 14 when only five teams played finals.

Brownlow medal winners by position: why midfielders win

The Brownlow is a midfielder's award. Of the 41 medallists since 1990, 35 are listed on their Wikipedia profiles as midfielders, alone or with another position, or played the old on-ball roles of rover or centreman, 85 percent. Four are listed as utilities, Wanganeen, Bartel and Adam Goodes twice, and two were ruckmen, Jim Stynes of Melbourne in 1991 and Scott Wynd of Footscray in 1992.

No ruckman has won since Wynd, and every one of the 20 medals from 2008 to 2026 went to a listed midfielder. Umpires cast 3-2-1 votes after each game, and the medal has long drawn criticism for favoring the players most constantly around the ball, a complaint noted in the press as early as 1938.

Multiple Brownlow Medal winners

Seventeen players have won the Brownlow more than once, and four have won it three times: Haydn Bunton Sr. of Fitzroy, Dick Reynolds of Essendon, Bob Skilton of South Melbourne and Ian Stewart, twice with St Kilda and once with Richmond. Five players have won it at two clubs, Chris Judd and Gary Ablett Jr. among them.

Seven players have won two medals entirely since 1990, and only one of their 14 medals came in a premiership year, Ablett's in 2009. Cripps won his second two years after his first, with a then-record 45 votes in 2024.

The 2026 Brownlow Medal: Nick Daicos and Collingwood

Nick Daicos won the 2026 Brownlow Medal at the count on Monday, 21 September 2026, at Crown Palladium in Melbourne, five days before the grand final. He polled 47 votes, a record under the 3-2-1 system, beating Cripps's 45, and won by 11 votes from Geelong's Bailey Smith (36), with the Western Bulldogs' Marcus Bontempelli third on 34. Daicos is Collingwood's 10th medallist, and only Sydney/South Melbourne, with 14, has more.

Collingwood finished ninth on the ladder at 12-9-2. That was a finals place only because 2026 was the first season of the AFL's wildcard round, with ten finalists: under the final eight used from 1994 to 2025, Daicos would have joined the eight medallists since 1990 whose club missed the finals. The Magpies lost their wildcard final to the Western Bulldogs, 14.12 (96) to 14.9 (93), and Daicos lamented after the count that his club was out of the finals.

The two medallists before him had a similar story. Matt Rowell's Gold Coast finished seventh in 2025, beat Fremantle by a point in an elimination final and lost a semi-final to the Brisbane Lions, and Cripps's Carlton was eighth in 2024. The Lions won all three of those premierships.

The 2027 race starts on the Vertize AFL ladder, and our AFL ladder predictor lets you play out the rest of the fixture to see whether next year's medallist's club can make the ten.

Brownlow Medal and premiership: frequently asked questions

How often does the Brownlow medallist win the premiership in the same year? Six of the 41 medallists since 1990 did, 15 percent, and 14 of 113 since the first medal in 1924, 12 percent. The last was Dustin Martin with Richmond in 2017.

Who won the 2026 Brownlow Medal? Collingwood's Nick Daicos, with a record 47 votes, 11 clear of Geelong's Bailey Smith, at the count on 21 September 2026.

What is the record for most Brownlow votes? Under the 3-2-1 system, Daicos's 47 in 2026, ahead of Patrick Cripps's 45 in 2024. Higher tallies in 1976 and 1977 came when two umpires voted in each game.

Who has won the most Brownlow Medals? Four players have won three: Haydn Bunton Sr., Dick Reynolds, Bob Skilton and Ian Stewart. Nobody has won three since Stewart's third in 1971.

How this was built: every Brownlow medallist from 1924 to 2026 with club and votes, read from Wikipedia's list of Brownlow Medal winners through the MediaWiki API on October 4, 2026; premiers and runners-up from its list of VFL/AFL premiers; final home-and-away ladders for 1990 to 2026 from the season pages; and each medallist's listed position from the infobox of their own page, with three blank infoboxes filled from the same page's text (rover, ruckman, centreman). Finals places are the top five in 1990, top six in 1991 to 1993, top eight in 1994 to 2025 and top ten in 2026. Joint winners count as separate medals, and the 2012 medal counts for Sam Mitchell and Trent Cotchin, who were awarded it after Jobe Watson's medal was withdrawn. The 2026 count was checked against the AFL's report.