Jobe Watson has had a remarkable year with Essendon, standing up while his teammates were falling down around him.
How can you fairly judge the season’s best
performers? North Melbourne star forward DREW PETRIE casts an eye over the AFL’s All-Australian and Brownlow Medal nights – and the people with the deciding votes.
WHY wasn’t Matthew Pavlich picked? How could Jack Riewoldt have been overlooked after winning the Coleman? How dare they leave out Drew Petrie?
Debate raged before, during and after the 2012 AFL All-Australian event on who should have made the team, and who shouldn’t have.
There’s never a civil outcome where everyone is happy. There will always be conjecture and head-scratching.
I’m obviously just messing around with that last one (Drew Petrie being left out), but there are some valid questions being posed. I suppose it’s important to remember there are always going to be some unlucky players who miss out. You just can’t squeeze them all in. With 15 first-time players making the All Australian team, the selectors seem to have ignored previous theories on how they would select the team and just choose a 22 on the merits of that season. I like it! If you dominated in 2012 then you should be in and that’s what happened.
For North, Andrew Swallow and I made the 40-man squad, which is an honour in itself. I found out about a week before the official announcement that I had not made the team. I wasn’t at all surprised. I had already decided I wasn’t going to make it due to the fact that I was contending with the likes of Lance Franklin, Tom Hawkins and Dean Cox for the tall forward spot. Even with Franklin missing six weeks, he still deserves to be in the team having almost won the Coleman medal on 59 goals. Franklin averaged seven shots on goal per game. Do the maths and it works out he would have had 42 more shots and was a shoo-in to have won the Coleman.
A trend I did pick up with the All-Australian team was that players who play in tandem within their own teams have frequented the side. Take Dean Cox and Nic Naitanui who play ruck and in the forward line for the Eagles. The combination of these two provides headaches for opponents all year.
Next up, it’s the Brownlow Medal and with it comes more debate and conjecture regarding the potential winner. Many suggest Gary Ablett will win the award again with Jobe Watson, Trent Cotchin, Patrick Dangerfield, Scott Thompson (Adelaide) and Sam Mitchell also in the frame.
For me, I’m backing Jobe. I just think he’s had a remarkable year with the Bombers and he stood up while all his teammates were falling down around him – literally. While Bombers had a horror second half of the season, their start was as good as any. But even in their losses, Jobe was a standout. In our 24-point win against Essendon in round 20, he played almost a lone hand with 32 possessions and a goal.
The fact they missed finals and only won 11 games might go against him, but the same can be said for Gary Ablett. The Suns won just three games yet Gaz is favourite to win his second Brownlow.
It’s that time of year when you see those viral emails go around with people’s calculations, round by round breakdowns and predictions. They make me laugh. You can’t simply apply a formula to the Brownlow Medal and come out with the winner.
The bottom line is that it’s all based on umpire opinion.
I still don’t understand how they can possibly know who the best players were when they’ve got so much on their plates during the game
There should be a selection panel because I don’t feel the umpires can give credit to all roles occurring in a match. Defenders are always neglected and there’s a reason so many midfielders get votes – they’re under the umpires noses all the time and in their line of sight more than any other player in any other position.