AFL 2009 Season - Brownlow Medal Predictions

Every year for the past few years I've compiled Brownlow Medal predictions with reasonable success.  Every game I rate each player on their chance to get 3, 2, or 1 votes - then based on these probabilities I simulate the season 30,000 times in order to find the average number of votes for each player over the whole season, and their respective chance to win the medal. 

A variety of statistics are fed into the Brownlow Model - for example, each player's kicks, marks, handballs, goals, inside 50's and even the number of free kicks they give away are found to be significant predictors of how many votes they will receive.  However the two most significant predictors are the margin your team wins by, and how many Supercoach points you receive in a game.  The latter is by far the major pointer to how well a player is likely to poll, and explains why I rate Gary Ablett so highly this year, as he has by far amassed the most Supercoach points per game played.

Given that the entire season is simulated, it enables me to produce a variety predictions, not just who will win the league.  Other stats I've produced include the likelihood of there being multiple winners, how many votes the winner is likely to poll, various head to head and group propositions, and who is likely to poll the most votes for each of the teams.

One point worth noting - these predictions are all based on cold, hard, observable statistics.  There's no accounting for other reasons a player might poll well - such as being based in the midfield, having blonde hair, or being named Adam Goodes for example.  All other things being equal, a midfielder kicking for goals will likely poll higher than a forward kicking 4 goals.

So here are the predictions for this year - if there is anything else you'd like to see let me know and I should be able to work it out.  For what it's worth I rated last year's winner Adam Cooney a 15% chance to win - he paid $14 so this represents close to double what I rated him, good value indeed

Click on the link to download a spreadsheet of advanced predictions

2009 Brownlow Medal Predictions

Player	Avg Votes	% Chance
Gary Ablett	26.8	75.08%
Dane Swan	22.4	21.93%
Nick Dal Santo	18.2	4.84%
Leigh Montagna	17.8	3.56%
Jonathan Brown	15.9	0.85%
Brendon Goddard	14.1	0.64%
Paul Chapman	15.1	0.38%
Sam Mitchell	13.3	0.00%
Alan Didak	14.4	0.27%
Lenny Hayes	12.3	0.19%
Chris Judd	12.4	0.18%
Nick Riewoldt	12.1	0.17%
Marc Murphy	11.5	0.13%
Adam Goodes	12.5	0.06%
Bernie Vince	10.6	0.05%
Brendan Fevola	12.4	0.03%
Luke Power	10.2	0.03%
Matthew Boyd	9.5	0.03%
Joel Selwood	10.0	0.02%