Originally Posted by
liz
I guess the midfielders - particularly the best few from each side - rarely have "quiet games" because their role is to get to lots of contests, and to flick the ball around a lot while they make up their mind what to do with it. But, despite what commentators would sometimes have you believe, a midfielder touching the ball 30 times, rather than 25, doesn't mean they've actually had more impact on the game. Not on its own. It depends what they do with it. And how they win it in the first place.
When Ablett (jnr) was in his prime, the commentators used to drool over him getting 30, sometimes 40 possessions a game. But what made him great was that, with about a dozen or so of those possessions, he split the game open, did things other players weren't capable of. Clearly, the more times a player gets the ball, the more chances he has to do something special with it, but it's that ability, not merely the accumulation of meaningless touches, that makes the best player great.
I don't have an issue with the winners list being dominated by midfielders. I just find it a bit sad that they are collecting such a high proportion of the votes. It used to be that you could win the Brownlow with barely 20 votes. Nowadays you don't stand a chance unless you score 30+. And some of those votes you'll have "won" without actually doing much special, but just because the umpires checked the stats at the end of the game and saw you touched it a lot.
When I think back to our game against Port, the first thing I remember is Charlie Dixon tearing us apart. And then Hewett keeping Boak very quiet in the first half, but Boak coming out after half-time and dominating the midfield, after our lads had done a very good job in the first half. The Brownlow votes were 3 Boak; 2 Franklin; 1 Wines. Franklin had a pretty good game (he kicked four goals) but Dixon was better. And a couple of our midfielders had better games than Wines. Arguably than Boak too, if you count both halves, though Boak's second half was worthy of recognition. I went and checked the AFLCA votes for the game and they bear out my recollection. Dixon scored 10 votes, Parker 8. Boak and Franklin featured in the minor votes, Wines did not.
Clearly that's just one game, and one where Wines just scored 1 point. So it's not comprehensive. But it does seem to suggest that maybe the umpires are swayed unduly by stats. (Eg Dixon only kicked two goals himself, to Franklin's four, but was the more dominant forward that game.)
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