The AFL best and fairest award is one of Australian rules football's oldest traditions, recognising the player who has performed most consistently and fairly throughout a home-and-away season. Every club runs its own version of the award, each with its own name, voting method, and history. Fans often confuse it with the AFL Brownlow Medal, which is the league-wide equivalent. The two are related in spirit but very different in structure.
What the best and fairest actually measures
The best and fairest is a measure of consistent excellence, not a single match-winning performance. Clubs generally give the award to the player who accumulated the most votes across the entire regular season. It's not reserved for the flashiest forward or the highest-profile name. Midfielders win it most often because they touch the ball more than any other position, but defenders and rucks have taken it plenty of times too.
The word "fairest" matters. It signals that conduct is part of the equation, at least in principle. A player who earns multiple suspensions during a season can be ruled ineligible for the award at some clubs, even if their on-field numbers suggest they deserved it. The exact rules vary between clubs.
How the voting works at club level
There's no single universal system. Each of the 18 AFL clubs sets its own voting process, and the differences are worth knowing.
The most common method is a three-vote system, in which club officials, coaches, or a selection panel award 3, 2, and 1 votes after each game. Some clubs use a panel of past players. A handful rely partly on peer voting, where players nominate their teammates. Richmond, for example, has used a combination of coach votes and peer votes for years.
Some clubs tally votes only for home-and-away matches. Finals appearances don't count toward the best and fairest count at most clubs, which is one reason the award can produce a different name from whoever is playing the best football in September. Games missed through injury also reduce a player's total, since a player who misses six rounds has six fewer chances to poll votes.
Suspension and the fairest clause
This is where it gets interesting. The AFL tribunal can suspend players for dangerous or illegal on-field conduct, and many clubs have a policy that a player suspended during the season is ineligible for the best and fairest. Some clubs set a threshold, say two weeks of suspension, before the ban on eligibility kicks in. Others apply it from the first game missed.
The practical effect is that a player who is brilliant but reckless can poll enough votes to win and still be disqualified at the count. That's happened. It's a controversial aspect of the award because it conflates statistical dominance with personal conduct, but most clubs consider it central to what the award is supposed to represent.
Club names for the award
Each club has given its best and fairest a distinct name, usually honouring a legendary past player. Here are a few:
- Collingwood: the Copeland Trophy, named after former captain Harry Copeland.
- Richmond: the Jack Dyer Medal, honouring the club's most celebrated ruckman-forward.
- Hawthorn: the Peter Crimmins Medal, named after the captain who died of cancer in 1976.
- Geelong: the Jim Carrf Medal.
- Sydney: the Bob Skilton Medal, after the three-time Brownlow medallist.
These names carry weight inside each club's culture. Winning the Copeland Trophy at Collingwood is a genuine statement. It means the coaching staff, the analysts, or the player group itself has rated you above everyone else for an entire year.
How it differs from the Brownlow Medal
The Brownlow Medal is voted on by the field umpires after every regular-season match, across all 18 clubs simultaneously. Three votes, two votes, one vote. The player with the most votes at the end of the season wins. It's a league-wide competition, not a club competition.
The best and fairest operates inside a single club. A player at a struggling bottom-eight side can win their club's best and fairest convincingly, yet poll only a handful of Brownlow votes because the umpires naturally focus on players in winning teams. The two awards measure different things, even if they're often won by similar types of players.
Can the same player win both?
Yes, and it happens. Patrick Cripps won the Brownlow Medal and Carlton's best and fairest (the John Nicholls Medal) in the same season. When a player does it, it's a near-certain sign they had an elite year by every available measure. It's rare, though, precisely because the voting bodies are different and the eligibility rules don't align perfectly.
Why the award still matters
In an era when player statistics are tracked every quarter and publicly available by Monday morning, you might expect a formal vote-based award to feel redundant. It doesn't. The best and fairest count night is one of the few moments when a club publicly ranks its players against each other, and the result carries genuine meaning inside the change room. Coaches monitor the vote tally through the year. Players notice who is polling and who isn't.
For younger players, winning the club best and fairest is often the first real signal that their career has arrived. For veterans, it can be the capstone on a long season of grinding work. The award doesn't come with a cheque or a trophy that sits in a cabinet at AFL House. It sits at the club. That's precisely where its value lives.