Roos: Take 'Fairest' Out Of Brownlow

"We’ve got to move past this notion"


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Triple M Footy’s Paul Roos is adamant that the time has come for the ‘fairest’ element to be taken away from the Brownlow Medal.

The 2005 Sydney premiership coach was ‘uncomfortable’ when talk surrounding Nat Fyfe’s one-week suspension for striking Collingwood’s Levi Greenwood automatically focused on the Fremantle captain being ineligible for the game’s most coveted individual award this year. 

Roos believes that if the Brownlow was changed to being awarded to the ‘best’ player in the competition rather than the ‘best and fairest’ player, it would stop any chat about whether a player can win the award if he gets suspended.

Fyfe was the favourite for this year’s Brownlow Medal before being suspended. He leads the AFLCA MVP and Herald Sun Footballer of the Year and is second in Triple M Footy’s Player of the Year. 

“I just don’t like how the conversation goes back to the Brownlow. That’s why I get frustrated. We shouldn’t link the two together and we naturally do,” Roos told Triple M’s Rush Hour during The Midweek Rub.

“Let’s take away the ‘fairest’ (element). I think we’ve got to move past this notion so then all of a sudden Nat Fyfe gets a week, everyone goes, ‘Yeah, that’s a fair penalty’, he’ll miss the three votes this week and there’s the penalty.

“The days when the Brownlow started there was no TV, and then you went into one game a week (going on TV) - how many cameras were at the game? So don’t tell me blokes that won Brownlows back then weren’t doing worse than what Nat Fyfe did on the weekend.”

6 June 2018




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