In a development league best and fairest count dominated by Northern players, Leedham pipped Northern Bombers midfielder Nathan Pearce by one vote after polling in eight of his 11 games.

"I wasn't expecting coming into the year that I'd be winning any sort of award so it's a bit of a surprise to me," the 24-year-old said.

"I've really enjoyed being able to teach some of the younger guys a few things over the year."

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Club co-captain in 2018, Leedham impressed in his 100^th senior game in round one but has since found himself stuck behind Tim Auckland and Joe Groenewegen in the deepest ruck division in the state.

Development league coach Kane Sanders described Leedham's presence as a 'godsend' ahead of Saturday morning's grand final, which will be the first of the 197cm tall's career.

Leedham said he had enjoyed supporting the Blues' up-and-coming players and giving the midfield first use.

"It was a little bit difficult for the first week but there's no point dwelling on it so I went back into the development league and played as well as I could," he said.

"I just do as well as I can for the team I'm playing for and we're all a tight-knit group down at Launceston.

"It was still a very exciting year ... playing with a whole different group of people than I have done the last couple of years, [it's] been exciting watching a lot of young players growing into different players than how they started the year out."

Blues coach Mitch Thorp spoke glowingly of Leedham's character and said the ex-Prospect Hawk had been in the mix for senior selection every week.

"It's a testament to his character - he's been a captain, he's played 100 TSL senior games and he did play particularly well round one and we made a very tough decision to bring in Tim Auckland in round two against North Launceston," Thorp said.

"Following that initial decision his character and bubbly personality ... he's been a terrific teammate to have at the club.

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"He could have quite easily thrown the towel in and either disappeared or not tried to play at his best, but winning the Eade Medal is a really symbolic moment for us as a club just to show how connected we are throughout our whole program.

"Hamish has been a credit to himself the way he's carried himself through adversity this year and he'll be a TSL player into the future, I'm sure of that."

Leedham is the third Blue to win the Eade Medal in the past four years following Cameron Downie (2017) and Anthony Liberatore (2018).