Gary Ablett tonight planted another powerful stamp on his AFL career footprint when he won the Gold Coast SUNS Club Championship Award for the third year in a row.
The champion midfielder polled 260 votes to win from Dion Prestia (213) and Jaeger O’Meara (204) in front of a sold out crowd at the Sharks Event Centre on the Gold Coast.
Queenslanders Rory Thompson (162) and Jarrod Harbrow (149) were next on the leaderboard, with Danny Stanley (142), David Swallow (135), Aaron Hall (130), Trent McKenzie (120) and Harley Bennell (103) rounding out the top 10.
Votes cast by senior coach Guy McKenna and off-siders Mark Riley, Matthew Primus, Dean Solomon and Andy Lovell were counted as the club celebrated a season in which they jumped from three wins in each of the 2011 and 2012 seasons to eight.
It was the second biggest improvement in the competition behind Port Adelaide’s increase from five wins to 12 wins, which has taken them from 14th on the ladder last year into this year’s finals and has set a target for the GC SUNS to emulate in 2014.
In other awards presented at a gala GC SUNS club championship:-
• Danny Stanley won the inaugural Players’ Player, as voted by the players themselves.
• Zac Smith, sidelined by injury in Round 8, won the Community Award.
• Rory Thompson was judged the HOSTPLUS Most Professional Player.
• Thompson, who had tied for 36th in the 2012 GC SUNS Club Championship before his meteoric rise this year, also won the Victor Sports Most Improved Player Award.
• And Jack Martin, set to make a huge impact on the AFL next season, won the GC SUNS NEAFL Player of the Year.
Ablett went into the vote count an unbackable favorite, and topped the leaderboard for all but two of the 23 rounds. Only when Charlie Dixon skipped ahead of him in Rounds 2-3 was he headed, but the result was never in doubt after the margin had reached 63 votes at Round 18.
The 2009 Brownlow Medalist and 2013 Brownlow fancy was judged the GC SUNS’ best player eight times, and ranked in the top three in 13 of the 21 matches he played.
He posted two ‘perfect games’, when the five voting members of the GC SUNS coaching panel each scored him a ‘5’ on the 0-5 voting system they used to assess the performance of every player in every match.
Ablett’s 25-vote games came against St.Kilda at Metricon Stadium in Round 1, when he had 34 possessions and kicked four goals, and against Collingwood at Metricon in Round 17, when he had 49 possessions, 10 clearances and two goals to mastermind the club’s first win over a top eight opponent. He also had four other games in which he polled 20 votes.
Charlie Dixon recorded the next best individual performance of the count when he polled 23 votes for his club record six goals against the GWS Giants in Canberra in Round 5.
Dion Prestia received 21 votes for his career-best 42 possessions against Adelaide at Metricon in Round 14 and 20 votes against Melbourne in Round 17, when they collected their first premiership points at the MCG via a 10-goal thumping.
Other 20-vote games were Aaron Hall’s five goals against Hawthorn in Round 9, Swallow’s standout effort in a losing side against Fremantle in Round 6, and Tom Nicholls’ breakout effort against Collingwood in Round 17.
Runner-Up Prestia, an emerging AFL star at age 20 after three seasons with the GC SUNS, was eighth on the leaderboard after Round 4 but had jumped to second by Round 9 and stayed there except for one week when he slipped to third.
O’Meara’s third-placing capped an extraordinary week for the 19-year-old first-year player, who on Wednesday won the AFL’s NAB AFL Rising Star Award. He was sixth in the vote-count by round 4, was third by Round 8, and other than twice when he jumped temporarily to second there he stayed.
Thompson, who emerged this year as one of the AFL’s best young key defenders, got to fourth on the leaderboard at Round 10 and did not move at all thereafter in a wonderfully consistent performance.
There were five changes to the top 10 in the GC SUNS club championship from 2012, with O’Meara, Thompson, Harbrow, Aaron Hall and McKenzie improving on their finish of 12 months earlier, while four players have now finished top 10 in each of the club’s three club champion vote-counts – Ablett (1st-1st-1st), Swallow (4th-7th-7th), Stanley (5th-3rd-6th and Bennell (10th-2nd-10th).
Prestia was judged the GC SUNS’ best player five times, which was second only to Ablett’s eight. Others to top an individual game vote-count (including ties) were Dixon (3), Swallow, Bennell and Aaron Hall (2), Greg Broughton, Stanley, Nicholls, Steven May and first-year players Andrew Boston and Timmy Sumner.
2013 Gold Coast SUNS Club Champion Top Ten
1st – Gary Ablett 260
2nd – Dion Prestia 213
3rd – Jaeger O’Meara 204
4th – Rory Thompson 162
5th – Jarrod Harbrow 149
6th – Danny Stanley 142
7th – David Swallow 135
8th – Aaron Hall 130
9th – Trent McKenzie 120
10th – Harley Bennell 103
Gold Coast SUNS Club Champion Voting System
The Gold Coast SUNS match committee, comprising of the senior coach and four assistant coaches can award votes to an unlimited number of players per match. A player can receive a maximum of five votes, from each individual member of the match committee, therefore the maximum number of votes a player can receive per round totals 25.
*Note in 2012 the match committee comprised of the senior coach and three assistant coaches, therefore the maximum votes a player could receive per round was 20.
2012 Gold Coast SUNS Club Champion Top Ten
1st – Gary Ablett 215
2nd – Harley Bennell 163
3rd – Danny Stanley 84
4th – Matthew Warnock 82
5th – Campbell Brown 69
6th – Brandon Matera 63
7th – David Swallow 61
8th – Tom Lynch 58
9th – Charlie Dixon 56
10th – Dion Prestia 53
