The Brownlow Medal has long been the most coveted individual award in footy, awarded to the player judged the best and fairest over the course of the season by umpires using a 3-2-1 system in each match. Increasingly, that voting system and in particular the fact that the umpires make the selections has seen many question whether it should be viewed as more significant than others like the AFLCA Champion of the Year, which is voted on by the coaches. But rightly or wrongly, the fact remains that after first being awarded exactly 100 years ago, the Brownlow is still the most illustrious award. Last year Lachie Neale was a surprise winner of the second of his career, but while he is again expected to poll well in 2024, the bulk of the main players – including each of the top four favourites – would be first-time winners. On this page, we’ll have a look at the chances of some of the top picks.
AFL 2024 Brownlow Medal Odds
 |  |  | |
| Nick Daicos | $5.50 | $5.50 | $5.50 |
| Marcus Bontempelli | $10.00 | $10.00 | $9.50 |
| Sam Walsh | $11.00 | $11.00 | $17.00 |
| Christian Petracca | $13.00 | $13.00 | $14.00 |
| Lachie Neale | $13.00 | $13.00 | $13.00 |
| Errol Gulden | $15.00 | $15.00 | $11.00 |
| Tom Green | $15.00 | $15.00 | $13.00 |
| Zak Butters | $15.00 | $15.00 | $16.00 |
| Clayton Oliver | $17.00 | $17.00 | $17.00 |
| Patrick Cripps | $17.00 | $17.00 | $20.00 |
Nick Daicos
For a period last year Nick Daicos was an almost unbackable favourite to win the Brownlow Medal, but as we have seen so many times, the votes didn’t always go where they were expected. Daicos did still poll really well; he had 28 votes with six weeks to go in the season and ultimately would have only needed four more from there to win it, but three consecutive vote-less weeks were followed by an injury which saw him miss the last three weeks of the home and away season, and he was resigned to a third place finish as a result. Often, it takes a year or two for up-and-coming players to register on the umpires’ radar and there is sometimes a slight delay between their recognition publicly, and how they perform in the Brownlow Medal, but it’s safe to say that Daicos is well and truly at the forefront of the umpires’ minds by now. Though he is only two years into his career, he has established himself as one of the best players in the business, with his elite skills and ability to find the football seemingly at will separating himself from nearly everyone else in the game. With Collingwood likely to win plenty of games once again this year and Daicos having established himself as their best player, and potentially the best in the game, he will receive plenty of attention from the umpires. With his consistent ability to have a huge impact, it would be no surprise to see him poll a huge number of votes this year.
Bet on Nick Daicos to win the Brownlow Medal at $5.50 with PlayUp
Marcus Bontempelli
Marcus Bontempelli is living proof that the Brownlow Medal is far from the be all and end all of individual accolades in the AFL. The Bulldogs skipper has had an incredibly decorated career already; he’s a two-time winner of the Leigh Matthews Trophy, given to the player voted the most important in the league by their peers, a one-time AFLCA Champion Player of the Year Award voted by coaches, as well as a five-time All-Australian, five-time Western Bulldogs best and fairest winner, two-time winner of the AFLCA Best Captain Award, Premiership winner – the list goes on. A Brownlow Medal is one of the few things missing from his resume, but it’s not as though he isn’t able to poll votes. He finished in second last year with 29, while a couple of years prior he polled 33 – a number which would be enough to win most years but which saw him fall three short of Ollie Wines that season. Despite the raft of accolades he has racked up throughout his ten-year career, Bontempelli is still just 27 years of age and well and truly in his prime. As it so often is, the performance of his team may have a lot to do with how well he polls, particularly with the Bulldogs having a pretty large gap between their floor and their ceiling, but if they’re in or around the top eight Bontempelli will more than likely be pushing 30 votes once again.
Bet on Marcus Bontempelli to win the Brownlow Medal at $10.00 with PlayUp
Sam Walsh
Sam Walsh exploded onto the scene in 2019 as a readymade 18-year-old, and since then the former number one draft pick has only continued to develop. Walsh makes the game look easy; he doesn’t necessarily have features that standout to the extent of a Bontempelli or Daicos, but he is an incredible runner, consistently puts himself in the right spots, and has the ability to use the ball well on both the inside and the outside. It didn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the umpires, either; in just his third year he racked up 30 votes in the high-scoring 2021 count, which was enough for third place. He hasn’t quite had the voting success since then, picking up 14 the year after and then just five last year, though consistent injuries kept him off the park for a number of games and hampered when he was on it. Unfortunately the back issues which plagued him last year will again delay his start to this season, and that may be the reason why there is a fairly significant discrepancy in his odds among different bookmakers. He also has plenty of quality players to contend for votes with – Patrick Cripps is a proven vote-getter, Adam Cerra is capable of picking up plenty, and Charlie Curnow will invariably put in a couple of best on ground performances, to name just a couple. Those factors mean that he looks like being a little less value than a couple of other names on this list, at least with the bookies at which he is the third favourite, but with others where he is at longer odds he could be worth a look.
Bet on Sam Walsh to win the Brownlow Medal at $17.00 with BoomBet
Christian Petracca
One of the most explosive players in the AFL, Christian Petracca has been a consistent feature in the upper echelons of the Brownlow Medal count, polling at least 20 votes in each of the last four years. He has plenty of team mates to share the votes around with, not least Clayton Oliver, and while that may hamper him to an extent this year, he has gradually been climbing up the leaderboard as his career goes on – his tally the last four years, beginning in 2020, reads 20, 23, 24, 26. He will need that trend to continue in 2024 if he wants to beat the names above, but with his penchant for three-vote games he is more than capable of doing so. Petracca can dominate games in many ways. He picks up 25 or more touches nearly every week, but he’s also booted just under 30 goals in two of the last three seasons. Last year he kicked four goals twice and three on another couple of occasions, with three of those games also being accompanied by 25 or more touches. Unsurprisingly, he got three votes in each of them. Unlike some other players, when Petracca is best on ground it’s often by a pretty clear margin, and with the Dees likely to be in or around the top four once again this season he will likely be putting in plenty of those kinds of performances. Almost certainly he’ll need to poll more votes than ever before to win it in what could be a high-scoring year, but now in his ninth year in the league and having been one of its best players for a number of years, he is primed to have potentially the best season of an already brilliant career.
Bet on Christian Petracca to win the Brownlow Medal at $13.00 with BoomBet
Lachie Neale
There are certain players who capture the attention of the umpires more than most, and Lachie Neale definitely falls into that category. A two-time Brownlow Medallist, he wasn’t a particularly popular pick to win his second last year in the lead up to the count, but he went ahead and polled 31 votes to pip Bontempelli and Daicos. But that’s not to say he’s not deserving of those votes. There is good reason why Neale polls so well. He consistently polls high disposal numbers, is as good around the clearances as anyone in the league, and plays on a team which wins the vast majority of their games and doesn’t necessarily have all that many other high vote getters running around. Neale was actually less prolific last season in terms of winning the ball than he has been in the past, particularly in his first Brownlow year, but that probably gives him an even better case to win it this year. Even in what he would probably acknowledge himself was a good year but not his best, he polled 31 votes, which incidentally made it four out of the last five seasons that have seen him poll at least 26 votes. He is capable of having an even better season this year than last, and with the Lions likely to finish right at the pointy end of the ladder it would be a surprise to see him not finish in the top five this year.
Bet on Lachie Neale to win the Brownlow Medal at $13.00 with BoomBet
Errol Gulden
Errol Gulden’s talent has been clear since he entered the league in 2021, but few could have predicted the speed at which he would develop into one of the best players in the league. His first two years were really good and he displayed a lot of improvement from 2021 to 2022, but he still polled just three Brownlow votes across those two years. Last year, he polled 27. He became the unequivocal best winger in the game, with Josh Daicos probably the only man able to go close to matching him. It isn’t hyperbolic to say that he is one of the most talented users of the football in recent history, and he added to that an ability to find the ball at will and boot plenty of goals along the way, too – most of them goals that few others would be able to pull off. He kicked 22 of them from the wing last year while also averaging just under 27 per game, and on four occasions had 37 touches or more across his 25 games during the season. It’s uncanny how much space he is able to find in the tight confines of the SCG, racking up numbers like no others wingers are able despite playing a role not necessarily suited to a small ground, but clearly his elite skills are matched by an uncanny understanding of the game. It’s rare for a player who has never really polled to jump up to 27 votes and fourth place within the space of the year, and having done that in 2023 he should be even more prominent in the umpires’ thinking this year. Having not been amongst the game’s elite for as long as some others like Neale and Bontempelli, perhaps there is a greater risk that he won’t replicate what he did last year in 2024, but with the Swans likely to improve and a couple of their key players out for half of the season, he will no doubt continue to be used significantly on the wing. He polled an incredible 22 votes in his last ten games of last season, and if he can continue anything like that kind of form he could easily win this year’s Brownlow Medal.
Bet on Errol Gulden to win the Brownlow Medal at $15.00 with PlayUp
Tom Green
Looking at the names on this list, it’s safe to say that the game is in good hands moving forward, and Tom Green is just another prodigiously talented young player who has already established himself as one of the best going around. The 22-year-old is already one of the best contested players in the league, with his hulking frame helping him to pick up the fifth most contested possessions last season. But that’s far from all he can do. Green is also a really good user of the footy, particularly by hand, and is capable of going forward and providing a really potent aerial threat. Surprisingly he only booted nine of them last year, including three in a dominant 38-possession, best on ground performance against the Bulldogs. Over the course of the season he picked up 16 votes, and clearly he will need to improve on that substantially to go close in the Brownlow Medal count. Kicking more goals is one way to do that, but likely he’ll also naturally get a bit more recognition from the umpires as he continues to establish himself among the league’s elite. Green is somewhat hampered by the fact that he has a lot of other players around him who poll a lot of votes, but even surrounded by the likes of Josh Kelly and Stephen Coniglio in the midfield he may well end the season as the leader of this talented midfield. Green doesn’t have the votes on the board in the same way as most of the other favourites in this market, but he should be recognised as one of the pre-eminent players in the game by the end of what will be his fifth season in the league, and it would be no surprise to see him poll a whole lot more votes than he ever has before.
Bet on Tom Green to win the Brownlow Medal at $15.00 with PlayUp
Zak Butters
Port Adelaide have long known the potential of Zak Butters, and 2023 was the first season in which it was truly unleashed. Previously a talented midfield/forward capable of producing moments of brilliance, last year he established himself as the leader of an elite Port Adelaide midfield, and one of the best mids in the game. He can find the ball as consistently as nearly anyone in the league, failing to get 25 or more touches on only three occasions after Round 3 in 2023, and his creativity with ball in hand is a major part of what makes the Power such a dangerous team. Despite his diminutive stature – he weighs only 71 kilograms – Butters is extremely elusive, slipping through the fingers of the opposition like they aren’t there and generally making sound decisions with the ball once he does. His ascension into the game’s elite last year was accompanied by a hell of a lot more Brownlow votes – having picked up six in the first four years of his career, he polled 27 last year in a season which included seven best on ground efforts. Still just 23 years of age, he will likely only get better this year, and with a year of attention from the umpire’s already under his belt he could very easily poll more than the 27 he managed in 2024.
Bet on Zak Butters to win the Brownlow Medal at $15.00 with PlayUp
Clayton Oliver
Clayton Oliver has spent a lot of time in the news over the past year, and a lot of that press has unfortunately been for off-field reasons. But despite the media circus which has seemed to follow him everywhere he goes during that time, he remains one of the best players in the game and somebody who has been a proven vote-getter for a long time. Never has he actually won the award, but he has gone close a couple of times, accumulating 31 votes in 2021 and 25 the year after. Last season he missed a bunch of games and when he returned later in the year he wasn’t quite as prolific as usual, but at the start of the year he was as good as ever, picking up 30 or more touches in eight of the first ten games, and 37 or more three times. Invariably a large portion of those possession are contested, with his hunger for the footy around the contest second to none, but his outside game – which hasn’t typically been quite as polished – has also improved significantly over recent years. It’s hard to know whether he will be at his best after a tumultuous off-season, but from all reports he is fit and ready to go. If he gets a full season in, he could easily go close to winning the Brownlow Medal.
Bet on Clayton Oliver to win the Brownlow Medal at $15.00 with PlayUp
Patrick Cripps
Finally, to Patrick Cripps. Alongside Oliver, Cripps is one of the most dominant contested players in the game, which is always a recipe for a lot of votes. The Carlton captain has shown a penchant for recognition from the umpires since very early in his career, picking up 18 votes in just his second year, while he also picked up 26 votes in 2019 and has managed 29 and 22 over the past two seasons. During that 29-vote season in 2022 he showed an ability to hit the scoreboard which was previously absent, booting 20 goals that season, though he didn’t replicate that last season and booted just nine. As good as his work around the contest is, in order to re-establish himself as a genuine Brownlow Medal chance, a few more goals will help while he also needs to get a little more of the footy around the ground. But Cripps is perennially under the umpire’s noses, and as a proven vote-getter should be getting plenty once again in 2024.
Bet on Patrick Cripps to win the Brownlow Medal at $20.00 with BoomBet
