Matt Priddis looked set to inherit the award because leader Nat Fyfe had defaulted due to suspension. But the spectre of an ineligible player finishing atop the vote tally disappeared when the prolific possession-winner and clearance-winner snared two votes in the last round of the year to become the outright winner of the award, rather than just the first player to fulfil both the best and fairest criteria.

‘‘It’s obviously a huge honour, and something I’m very proud of,’’ he said last night, when accepting the award.

Priddis’s coach at the Eagles, Adam Simpson, was rapt with the 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, four of them as best afield.

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

Given Fyfe’s ineligibility, the joint runners-up for the award 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 that he was ‘‘going to play at the highest possible level I could be at’’, even if that was just in the WAFL.

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

Since belatedly getting his AFL chance, however, 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 due to pregnancy with the second child, after daughter Nala.

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