Applying Historical Brownlow Numbers to the 2024 Count

Polling history matters. We’ve seen players that have struggled to poll their entire career, while the likes of Neale, Cripps and Fyfe have always caught the eye of the umpires.

So using historical data, we’ve looked into the favourites for this year’s award and categorised their performance based on each game they’ve played in 2024.

In doing this, we have focused on the key metrics that translates to Brownlow success – disposals, goals, contested possessions, and their team’s result. An example of this is in the 11 games across Patrick Cripps' career where he's had 25-29 disposlas, including 15+ contested in a win, he's managed 13 votes. Therefore, we have allocated Cripps 1.18 votes for his Round 3 performance against North Melbourne.

Now the sample size is certainly low for some which includes third-year players Nick Daicos and Jason Horne-Francis, while the likes of Tom Green, Errol Gulden and Noah Anderson also lack the sample size of our three favourites in this year’s count in Bontempelli, Cripps and Neale. To counter this, we’ve applied a scaling based on how many home and away games these players have played across their career as per the below table.

Games Played	Scaling %
0-50 games	-10%
51-100 games	-5%
101-150 games	-1%

Once this scaling has been applied, the results are interesting and freakishly close to the current projected counts available online.

Historical data has Brownlow favourite Patrick Cripps on top, which makes plenty of sense with the Blues Skipper polling in both winning and losing teams his entire career. He’s closely followed by Nick Daicos and Marcus Bontempelli in the market, but outside the top-three that’s where it takes an unexpected turn.

His Supercoach scores may be all over the shop, but Tom Green could surprise Brownlow Night

In fourth spot we have Giants midfielder Tom Green on 23.12 votes, who is currently listed at $51 in the market. This is due to his ability to poll maximum votes when he kicks a goal in a winning performance where he’s had over 25 disposals, while he’s capable of picking up a lot of 1-vote games where he played big in losing teams.

Just behind Green is Sydney’s Errol Gulden. The winger polled really well last year, and when he’s recorded 30+ disposals in wins across his short-career, he’s nearly perfect at polling the three producing 17 votes from six games – he’s done this in six Sydney wins this season.

On the flipside of this, one-time Brownlow favourite Isaac Heeney is not even close. The data doesn’t take into effect positional change, but we’ve got Heeney on just 12.38 votes due to his polling history very much focused around how many goals he kicks.

With Tom Green the clear value from this, there’s also value in the current team markets as the leaderboard stands with Andrew Brayshaw $13 to win Fremantle’s count.

Player	Proj. Votes	Scaling	Scaled Proj. Votes
Patrick Cripps	26.38		26.38
Nick Daicos	28.18	-10%	25.36
Marcus Bontempelli	25.20		25.20
Tom Green	24.34	-5%	23.12
Errol Gulden	24.21	-5%	23.00
Noah Anderson	22.74	-5%	21.60
Andrew Brayshaw	21.12	-1%	20.91
Lachie Neale	20.07		20.07
Zach Merrett	19.73		19.73
Zak Butters	19.25	-5%	18.29
Jason Horne-Francis	20.16	-10%	18.14
Adam Treloar	17.90		17.90
Caleb Serong	18.63	-5%	17.70
Chad Warner	17.00	-5%	16.15
Isaac Heeney	12.38		12.38