The Brownlow Medal is the leading individual accolade in the AFL game. Originating in 1924 as the Chas Brownlow Trophy (an ex-player and chairman of the Geelong Football Club), it is given to the fairest and best player of the home-and-away AFL season. Voting is conducted by the field umpires after each game on a 3-2-1 points system. The votes are immediately locked away until the official count at the awards ceremony at the season’s end. Players who have been disqualified for any time by the tribunal throughout the season are ineligible to win the award, so pay attention when placing your Brownlow bets of players who often faces bans.

The Brownlow Medal count ceremony traditionally takes place the Monday night before the Grand Final at a televised function with the Chairman of the AFL revealing each vote. The ceremony has, over the years, grown to become a highlight of the Australian social calendar. It has also become a pivotal betting event for AFL fans with even live betting during the ceremony itself.

If two or more players finish with equal votes they are declared joint winners. Only four players in its history have won three Brownlow Medals – Haydn Bunton (Fitzroy), Dick Reynolds (Essendon), Bob Skilton (South Melbourne) and Ian Stewart (St Kilda and Richmond). Another eight players have won two Brownlows.

Win, place, each way, quinella and trifecta betting are all offered in the Brownlow odds markets at Sportsbet

Coleman Medal betting and history

The Coleman Medal is awarded each year by the AFL to the player who kicks the most goals in the home-and-away AFL season. The highly sought after honour is named after Essendon full forward John Coleman, who scored 537 goals in 98 games – including 12 on debut in 1949 – before his career was cut short in 1954 by a major knee injury.

First presented in 1955, the award will generally go to a player in a forward position, playing in one of the top performing teams. The 70s, 80s and 90s proved to be boom years for goal scorers, with many bagging 100+ goals over a season. More recently, as the game itself has evolved, we are seeing Colman Medal winners with 60-70 goals. Due to the high profile nature of the award, betting on the Coleman Medal itself is now available at all Australian bookmakers.

In recent years AFL punters have had some big wins with the Coleman Medal favourites obliging. The likes of Franklin and Riewoldt generally start as Coleman betting favourites.

Collingwood forward Dick Lee has won the leading goal kicking award record 8 times, in the early 1900s when the award was known as the ‘leading goalkicker medal’. Post-1955, Tony Lockett (St Kilda, Sydney), Peter Hudson (Hawthorn) and Doug Wade (Geelong, North Melbourne) have won the Coleman Medal a record 4 times each.

Win and each way betting is available throughout the season, just check out the latest Coleman Medal odds at Sportsbet

New Sydney Swans forward Lance Franklin will appeal to some punters at $26.00 but forwards have a woeful record when it comes to Brownlow polling and better value might be in the usual suspects in the middle of the park. 2013 Brownlow runner up Joel Selwood won’t be far away come Brownlow Medal night, and neither will prolific pollers Dane Swan and Sam Mitchell.

Brownlow Medal odds are revised and published every week by the major corporate online bookmakers such as Sportsbet, so it’s well worth developing a portfolio of Brownlow bets at bigger odds and taking advantage of over-reactions in the odds after a player has a poor game. Players rarely poll in every game and can often come with a late season surge as Joel Selwood did last year. Yet bookmakers continue to push out players to huge prices simply because they’ve played a bad round or miss a couple of games due to minor injuries.

As with all bets, value is the key, and we’ll take five players against the field at juicy each way odds with Sportsbet:

Michael Barlow at $26.00

Travis Boak at $41.00

Ryan Griffen at $23.00

David Mundy at $41.00

Patrick Dangerfield at $11.00

Good luck!