There was plenty to digest after Patrick Cripps’ record-breaking vote haul at Monday night’s Brownlow Medal count. We take a look at the key questions.

Forget the cost-of-living inflation dragon, the RBA now has another issue to deal with – Brownlow voting inflation. It’s absolutely bonkers that Cripps polled a record 45 votes (outside the 1976 and 1977 seasons when vote tallies were doubled after the introduction of two umpires), smashing the previous mark of 36 set by Ollie Wines in 2021 and Dustin Martin in 2017.

Record breaker: Brownlow winner Patrick Cripps had a stunning season.Credit: Getty Images

Cripps averaged almost 29 disposals per game and led the league in clearances. But was he more important to the Blues than full-back and fellow All-Australian Jacob Weitering, who did not poll even one vote? How many games would the Blues have won without Weitering? Was Cripps’ season that much better than say, that of Jason Dunstall of 1992, when the Hawthorn forward booted 139 goals in the home-and-away campaign, yet finished second in the Brownlow with what now seems a miserly 18 votes?

That Nick Daicos finished second this year – with 38 votes – reinforced the inflationary pressures the count has been under since it became the exclusive domain of midfielders. Remember, between 1940 and 2010, no player had more than 30 votes in a single season; Cripps became the first to poll at least 40. Cripps, as great as he is, had........

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