Shock winner of Brownlow Medal

A relentless West Coast midfielder considered good enough to make the All-Australian squad but not great enough to make the final team, has won the AFL's highest individual honour, the Brownlow Medal.

Matt Priddis looked set to inherit the award because leader Nat Fyfe had defaulted due to suspension. But the spectre of an ineligible player topping the voting disappeared when the prolific possession winner snared two votes in the last round to become the outright winner.

"It's obviously a huge honour, and something I'm very proud of," Priddis said when accepting the award.

West Coast coach Adam Simpson was rapt with his player's award, but pointedly said it "makes you question the All-Australian panel".

Priddis arrived at the event with moderate hopes, believing he had only a consistent year. The umpires disagreed, awarding him votes in 13 of his 22 matches, including four for best on ground.

The conjecture in the second half of the season that Fyfe, as the recipient of arguably the year's most contentious suspension early in the season, could be blocked from winning the Brownlow, as Chris Grant and Corey McKernan were in the late 1990s, was explained by his dazzling form in the second half of 2014. Between rounds 13 and 20 he polled in six matches, and was best afield in four, to surge to 25 votes. It was there he stayed as he missed the last two matches due to another suspension, a much more straightforward striking charge.

Given Fyfe's ineligibility, the joint runners-up were Gold Coast's Gary Ablett and Sydney's Lance Franklin on 22 votes, followed by four revered midfielders on 21 votes: Port Adelaide's Travis Boak, Adelaide's Patrick Dangerfield, Sydney's Josh Kennedy and Geelong's Joel Selwood.

While Priddis missed out on two drafts, and in the meantime had to work on a building site, he said his overriding goal was to play at the highest level he could, even if that was in the WAFL.

"I was never going to give up because it was absolutely a childhood dream," he said.

But since getting his AFL chance, he has proved his worth at the highest level. Besides many former coaches, a key recipient of praise from Priddis was his partner of 12 years and now wife Ashleigh, who was absent from the count due to pregnancy.

"My best two years of footy have been since the birth of my first child," Priddis said. "They just give me so much balance."

Selwood polled in all of Geelong's first four matches to steal an early march on his rivals, before he was predictably overhauled by defending champion Ablett. Given Ablett was sidelined for the last seven rounds of the year, a fast start was essential to his hopes. He did not disappoint, gaining four best-on-grounds in the first six rounds of the season. By round seven he had 14 votes – the most ever recorded at that stage of a count.

Kennedy regularly featured in the votes, six times in the opening nine rounds, but only two of those were best afields.

Swans spearhead Franklin polled only once in the opening seven rounds, an unsurprising result given his mediocre start to the season. His emphatic recovery began by polling in three consecutive matches from round eight.

In the first half of the season the biggest bolter in the leaderboard was Dangerfield, who by round nine  had also reached 14, only for Ablett to move to 17 with a fifth three-vote match.

Greater Western Sydney captain Callan Ward was similarly rewarded, polling three early best-afields, and then a fourth and fifth in rounds 13 and 14 to, already by that stage, record the Giants' best result with 15 votes.