AFL: The 2011 Brownlow Medal Dinner - Superstars, WAGs and Toilet Breaks

The Chas Brownlow Medal is awarded to the AFL Footy Player of the year at an annual awards dinner in the week of the Grand Final. It's one of the hottest tickets in town, with paparazzi, red carpets, a live television broadcast, the cream of Australia's beautiful, rich young things, and an ageing crowd of corporate hangers-on. You've guessed it, I fell into the latter group, but I wasn't complaining too much even if our table was strategically located at the back of the room, firmly away from the cameras. The producers probably had us marked down as the 'good faces for radio' table long before we arrived.



The event itself underlines just how nuts the Aussies are about their football. I had no idea how the dinner was going to work, and was a both bemused and nervous when it was explained to me by a helpful Footy man. After each AFL game the umpires vote for the top 3 performances of the game, casting their votes into sealed envelopes which are duly transported by armed guards from each ground to Footy HQ, where they are locked into a vault. The results were announced tonight, game by game, round by round. A quick calculation later, and I realised that I would be sitting through 24 rounds of 8 games, with 3 votes per game... whoah, that would be 576 results to be announced. Crikey, I hoped they had a lot of beer in the back. This was sounding like the Eurovision song contest on steroids.

This WAG had a baby
3 months ago. Seriously.

And so it proved to be. They had live interviews, footage, and threw in a joke or two along the way, but all that was missing was Terry Wogan. For the first time in my life I was actually grateful for the ridiculous amount of ad breaks they have on Channel 7.

This meant there was a break every 15 minutes; cue the cameras switching off and a mass exodus for the bathrooms. You call it a toilet break, I call it my own personal fashion show. Our table at the back of the room was suddenly the best table in the house, with each superstar WAG parading by us on their way out. Allegedly, some Footy players wandered by us as well, but who cared? This was a live version of Hello magazine which I know is deplorable tabloid fodder, but it's also rather fascinating to see in the flesh. I could go into detail about their frocks, but I'm colour blind and it would be pointless. I could talk about their hair do's, which were, er, mainly blonde and free flowing. Or their incredibly skinny, tall frames and catwalk struts. But what I noticed more than anything was that all these supermodel types have incredibly weak bladders. They notched up around 8 toilet visits each, not that I was counting or anything. Where were they getting all their booze from I had no idea, because our waiter had long since gone AWOL.

Give us a kiss before you
go to the loo again,
I've got my trophy to pick up.

The Awards themselves eventually ended around 11pm, with Collingwood's Dale Swan winning with the largest vote count in the history of the Medal, and he received his award with a shy humility and grace. Or someone had just woken him up to tell him it was finally over, I wasn't too sure.




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For the official low down on the dinner and award count, click here.

I was extended an invite to the after show party by the hosts, but I thought I'd leave that to the pro's. In case you want to read about it, click here.

Or, if you just want to check the fashion out, click here.