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Isaac Heeney polled 26 votes in the Brownlow Medal count. (Getty Images: Jason McCawley)
Isaac Heeney finished outside of the top five in the Brownlow Medal count.
Heeney was one of five Swans players stood down by the club following a post-match incident in Melbourne last month.
The AFL has avoided the unwanted scenario of one of Sydney's suspended players winning the Brownlow Medal, with Isaac Heeney finishing outside the count's top five.
The league had a contingency plan in place if Heeney had won the game's highest individual honour.
But Nick Daicos's record-breaking number of votes, and prolific polling from Bailey Smith and Marcus Bontempelli, meant the plan never needed to come into play.
Nick Daicos will receive a financial windfall worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from his Brownlow win, including a bonus that was written into his Collingwood playing contract and proceeds from a marketing campaign that kicked off before the medal was even around his neck.
A box of Nike T-shirts commemorating Daicos’ triumph arrived at Crown Palladium while the count was still in progress, while towering billboards went up around Melbourne.
Nike, a Collingwood partner with whom the 23-year-old also has an independent deal, launched the campaign branded “inevitable” on the morning of the Brownlow count.
Daicos is one of the small handful of AFL players who command such independent deals, earning more than $500,000 a year from commercial partnerships alongside his Magpies contract, which this masthead reported was worth $1.2-1.3 million last season and runs to 2029.
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We look at the games where the umps and coaches differed in their votes
FROM unexpected threes to unexpectedly missing out, an entertaining Brownlow Medal count delivered some surprises on Monday night.
Collingwood superstar Nick Daicos, as expected, claimed victory with a record 47 votes to win by 11.
There were some anomalies when comparing Brownlow votes to votes in the AFL Coaches Association's Champion Player of the Year, but not as many as previous years.
BROWNLOW TRACKER See every vote from every gameNICK'S NIGHT Daicos sets new Brownlow record with famous winYOUR CLUB'S BROWNLOW Every vote, first timers, biggest shocksTALKING POINTS Kozzy empty handed, Butters' shock vote, AA missesHAWK'S SHOCK The 23 times the umpires and coaches disagreedGALLERY All the pics from the 2026 Brownlow Medal red carpetMOTY/GOTY Wizard's wet-weather screamer, Lion's miracle voted best of the year
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