2015 Brownlow Medal


The 2015 Brownlow Medal was the 88th year the award was presented to the player adjudged the fairest and best player during the Australian Football League home and away season. Nat Fyfe of the Fremantle Football Club won the medal by polling thirty-one votes during the 2015 AFL season. He became the first player to win the Brownlow Medal.

Leading votegetters


PlayerVotes
1stNat Fyfe 31
2ndMatt Priddis 28
3rdSam Mitchell 26
4thJosh Kennedy 25
5thDan Hannebery 24
6thPatrick Dangerfield 22
7thDustin Martin 21
=8thDavid Mundy 19
=8thCallan Ward 19
10thTodd Goldstein 18

Voting procedure

The three field umpires confer after each match and award three votes, two votes and one vote to the players they regard as the best, second best and third best in the match, respectively. The votes are kept secret until the awards night, and are read and tallied on the evening.
A change was made in 2015 to the rules under which players could become ineligible for the Brownlow Medal. Under previous rules, players were ineligible if found guilty at the AFL Tribunal of an offence with a base penalty equal to or greater than a one-match suspension, even if the player then avoided suspension by taking an early guilty plea after the Match Review Panel's findings. Under the new rules:
Due to these changes, there were just 34 players ineligible in 2015, compared with 61 in 2014.
On 3 July 2015, the round 14 match between and was cancelled following the death of Adelaide coach, Phil Walsh, resulting in players from those teams having one fewer game available to them to poll votes. Various commentators made proposals to remove this disadvantage, such as removing all round 14 votes from the count or awarding double votes for the return match between Adelaide and Geelong in round 23; but the AFL rejected all proposals, pointing out that the disadvantage to the players involved was no different to players who had missed the chance to poll votes in previous Brownlow medals due to their participation in interstate matches. The missing game ended up having no impact on the medal, as the highest-polling player from those clubs was still nine votes behind the winner.