GOOD NEWS: Carlton’s Patrick Cripps wins second Brownlow Medal with record 45 votes…SEE MORE…

In a bloated broadcast loaded with cliche, inanity and vacuity, something quite unexpected happened on Monday night. More than a year after he’d been knocked out in a qualifying final, and eight months after he’d been medically retired, Angus Brayshaw walked on stage and proposed a toast.

“It’s certainly not lost on me that I’m making a toast to a group that I now belong,” he said. “The absence of football has left a very deep void. Days that were planned to the minute, and filled with purpose, need to be replaced and in time they will be. Football is all-consuming, and no matter how long your career was, how successful it was, or even how well you prepared for the next stage, the transition is difficult.”

It was unusual to see someone who didn’t have a medal around his neck speak with such honesty and emotional depth. Then, of course, we went back to the betting ads, to the bored girlfriends, to the musical interludes, to Hamish McLachlan’s reverse telegraphic line of questioning (“Crippa. Brownlow. Chance?”) and to the very real question of whether this event was going to wind up before Saturday’s game.

There were no such surprises with Patrick Cripps’ second Brownlow Medal. But not even the most rusted-on Carlton fan could have predicted such a demolition. He and Nick Daicos were expected to go stride for stride. But the Carlton champion finished seven votes ahead. He smashed Dustin Martin and Ollie Wines’ record for the most votes in a season, and became the 17th man to win a Brownlow medal at least two times.

He won his first Brownlow with 29 votes. That night, he spoke of his shyness, his stutter, his fear of public speaking. He was the outstanding player that year, and deserved to win, but he got a nice leg up from Carlton’s tribunal lawyer. No one on the Blues’ payroll, with the possible exception of Cripps himself, worked harder and hit more targets than Christopher Townshend KC. He claimed an initial tribunal decision to suspend Cripps – thus making him ineligible for the Brownlow – was “infected with error”. He didn’t draw breath for nearly two hours. And he helped deliver Cripps’ Brownlow.