Past Winners' Profile: Chas' 2026 Prediction
Nick Daicos is $1.01. My model has him second.
Not second by a whisker either. He is a quarter of a point behind a bloke paying $251.
I have not watched a game of football this year. Not one quarter, not one highlight. The rest of the Downlow team watch every match and argue about umpires. I score every player in the competition on three numbers and read off the top. That is the whole method.
Brownlow Medal 2026 Predictor - I got last year wrong, so I rebuilt it
I tipped Tom Green at $51. He finished 15th. Matt Rowell won.
The problem was not the statistics, it was the arithmetic. The old version used four pass-or-fail tests — twenty-five disposals, top ten for contested ball, ten goals, a top-twenty finish the year before — and a player either ticked a box or did not. That treats fourteen goals and thirty-two goals as the same thing.
It is not the same thing. In 2017 that model had Josh Kennedy ahead of Dustin Martin, because Kennedy was four places better for contested possessions. Martin kicked eighteen more goals and won with a record thirty-six votes.
So the boxes are gone. Every player now gets a score.
How the score works
Three numbers, all per game, all from the home-and-away season only.
Contested possessions. Disposals. Goals.
Each one is measured against the rest of the competition, so being the best in the league at something counts for more than being merely good. Add the three together. Highest score wins. No weightings, no tiebreakers, no adjustments — I tried adding clearances, tackles, inside 50s, team ladder position and games played, and every single one made it worse.
Two rules sit on top. A player needs eight goals to be tipped, because the score alone will reward a midfielder who never goes forward. And anyone suspended during the season is thrown out, because they cannot win it.
What it has actually done
Run blind over the last twenty seasons, using only what was knowable before each count:
Year | My tip | Price | Finished | Winner | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2006 | Chris Judd | $5.50 | 4th (21 v) | Adam Goodes | $2.60 |
2007 | Chris Judd | $151 | 11th (16 v) | Jimmy Bartel | $10 |
2008 | Gary Ablett | $3 | 3rd (22 v) | Adam Cooney | $13 |
2009 | Gary Ablett ✅ | $3 | 1st (30 v) | Gary Ablett | $3 |
2010 | Gary Ablett | $4.50 | 2nd (26 v) | Chris Judd | $17 |
2011 | Dane Swan ✅ | $11 | 1st (34 v) | Dane Swan | $11 |
2012 | Gary Ablett | $4.00 | 6th (24 v) | Jobe Watson | $5.50 |
2013 | Gary Ablett ✅ | $1.90 | 1st (28 v) | Gary Ablett | $1.90 |
2014 | Gary Ablett | $4.25 | 3rd (22 v) | Matt Priddis | $17 |
2015 | Nat Fyfe ✅ | $2.00 | 1st (31 v) | Nat Fyfe | $2.00 |
2016 | Patrick Dangerfield ✅ | $1.20 | 1st (35 v) | Patrick Dangerfield | $1.20 |
2017 | Dustin Martin ✅ | $1.08 | 1st (36 v) | Dustin Martin | $1.08 |
2018 | Tom Mitchell ✅ | $1.45 | 1st (28 v) | Tom Mitchell | $1.45 |
2019 | Nat Fyfe ✅ | $7 | 1st (33 v) | Nat Fyfe | $7 |
2020 | Lachie Neale ✅ | $1.25 | 1st (31 v) | Lachie Neale | $1.25 |
2021 | Clayton Oliver | $3.50 | 3rd (31 v) | Ollie Wines | $2.75 |
2022 | Patrick Cripps ✅ | $2.60 | 1st (29 v) | Patrick Cripps | $2.60 |
2023 | Christian Petracca | $6.50 | 6th (26 v) | Lachie Neale | $13 |
2024 | Patrick Cripps ✅ | $2.50 | 1st (45 v) | Patrick Cripps | $2.50 |
2025 | Tom Green | $51 | 15th (20 v) | Matt Rowell | $13 |
Eleven from twenty. The tip has finished top three sixteen times and its median finishing position is first. Over the last fourteen seasons it is nine from fourteen.
Read the price columns rather than the names. The winner's median price is under three dollars, but seven of the twenty paid ten or longer. This is not a one-horse award, whatever the favourite is paying.
The 2026 top five
So - here's my Brownlow Medal 2026 Predictor.
1. Isaac Heeney ($251) — 6.57. Eighth in the competition for contested ball, 26.90 disposals, and thirty-two goals, which is more than anyone else in this fifteen. He is the only player in the league who is top-ten for contested possessions and a genuine goalkicker at the same time. His twenty games are fewer than everyone above him in the market. The model does not adjust for that, and the record says it should not — Nat Fyfe won off eighteen games, Lachie Neale won off seventeen. Umpires vote on the games you play.
2. Nick Daicos ($1.01) — 6.29. The best disposal-winner I have ever measured. 34.65 a game is the highest number in this dataset and it is not close. Twenty-six goals. He loses the top spot on one thing: 10.78 contested possessions a game, which ranks 22nd. Last year I flagged the same hole when he was 34th. He has improved and it is still the one thing separating him from the players who win this.
3. Patrick Cripps ($81) — 5.50. Second in the AFL for contested ball at 14.42 a game, twenty-four games, and a dual medallist who holds the record with forty-five votes. Fifteen goals is what holds him down. If this were the old four-box model he would be my tip. It is not, and he is third.
4. Marcus Bontempelli ($67) — 5.40. Thirty-one goals and 26.57 disposals. Fourteenth for contested possessions.
5. Bailey Smith ($51) — 5.14. 32.64 disposals is second only to Daicos. Eleven goals is the problem — the score wants a midfielder who hurts you both ways.
Out on the goals rule: Lachie Neale ($151). Thirteenth for contested ball, thirty disposals a game, five goals. The score liked him. The rule does not.
The tip
Isaac Heeney @ $251
I am aware of how that reads next to a $1.01 favourite. Here is the case, and it is only ever the numbers.
The model has picked eleven of the last twenty winners and its median tip finishes first. The two years it beat the market outright were Dane Swan at $11 in 2011 and Nat Fyfe at $7 in 2019 — both times it backed contested ball and goals over a short-priced disposal machine, and both times it was right. That is the exact shape of this year's call.
Daicos wins if volume wins. Thirty-four disposals a game drowns out most things and he may well poll thirty-five votes. But the one statistic that best predicts this medal is the one he is 22nd at, and I am not going to un-learn that because the market has him unbackable.
We will find out on Monday 21 September. If you want to watch it land vote by vote, our count night tracker runs 20 independent expert vote counts plus the Downlow Average and the Downlow Median — 22 leaderboards in total — so you can see where every count has your player before the umpires get there. There is a walkthrough of how it all fits together in the spreadsheet summarised, and the full package is here.
Cheers,
Chas
FAQ
Who is favourite for the 2026 Brownlow Medal?
Nick Daicos, at $1.01. He led the competition for disposals with 34.65 per game and polled 32 votes last year to finish second. My model has him second on 6.29, behind Isaac Heeney on 6.57, because he ranks 22nd for contested possessions.
How many votes does it take to win the Brownlow?
The last twenty winners have polled between 24 and 45 votes, with a median of about 30. Patrick Cripps won with a record 45 in 2024 and Matt Rowell needed 39 in 2025. Thirty votes used to be plenty. Now it is a starting point.
When is the 2026 Brownlow Medal count?
Monday 21 September 2026, at Crown Palladium in Melbourne. Votes are read round by round, 3-2-1, from home-and-away matches only — finals do not count.
How accurate is the winner's profile?
It has tipped 11 of the last 20 winners outright, finished top three in 16 of them, and its median tip finishes first. Over the last fourteen seasons it is 9 from 14. It scores every player on contested possessions, disposals and goals per game, and tips the highest.
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