With less than 10 sleeps until the season gets underway, thought it was timely to put up a quick post around the pre-season brownlow predictions and also introduce yet another feature to this awesome site.

This year, you can record your own brownlow predictions as the season roles on - in two formats.  Firstly, your standard 3-2-1 is on offer, in line with how the votes will be given on the night.  Secondly, you can give out a total of 12 votes to as many as 6 players, with no more than 6 votes to go to any one player.  The beauty of this is, it will really establish when you are very confident in a certain player picking up the 3 - and when it aint as clear cut, you can share the love .

Your votes will be recorded and are only visible to you, however votes will be collected across all voters to feedback to the general public, and keep a running total of where the overall Too Serious predictions are at.  You do have the option to opt out of having your votes counted towards overall totals however.

So, to the predictions for 2011... (more over the break)<!--more-->Before I delve into this, lets have a look at some interesting stats.  Last year, whilst the overall winner wasnt predicted, we did manage to correctly pick out 13 of 16 team winners (which is where all the cash is ), and with the use of the 210 or other similar bet systems, a lot of people took home a very decent amount of cash.

The three team winners that werent predicted (being Sandilands, Harvey and Hayes), all shared something in common: they were all proven vote winners over the players I had in front of them, being Barlow, Swallow and Goddard.  So how can this be measured?

Well over 90% of votes are given to players who have a combined SuperCoach + DreamTeam score over 200.  So I looked into this further to see which players can consistently turn these quality fantasy scores into Brownlow votes.

I also looked into which players get noticed by the umpires, but not necessarily enough to draw the three.  All of Judd, Ablett, Swan and Selwood polled in 12 games or more last year, however what set Judd apart was his ability to pick up the three.

Before you look through the results, keep in mind that across the league, the average percentage chance for picking up votes for a +200 SC/DT game is 45%, and the average number of votes being 2 (well, duh...).

Below is the order of best to worst pollers over the last 3 seasons, however to make this list you needed to be a premium in 2010:

Judd - 78% polling rate per +200 SC/DT game, @ 2.43 votes per game polled
Selwood - 78% @ 2.00
Sandilands - 77% @ 2.00
Ablett - 72% @ 2.29
Boyd - 60% @ 2.19
Franklin - 57% @ 2.13
Harvey - 57% @ 2.44
Hayes - 56% @ 2.45
Barlow - 56% @ 2.40
Watson - 54% @ 2.07
Riewoldt - 53% @ 2.06
Montagna - 53% @ 1.90
Pendlebury - 52% @ 2.41
Swan - 51% @ 1.92
Lake - 47% @ 1.89
Swallow - 45% @ 1.80
Jack - 45% @ 2.40
Cross - 45% @ 1.93
Gibbs - 45% @ 2.00
Priddis - 43% @ 1.92
Goddard - 42% @ 2.13
Hodge - 41% @ 2.08
Didak - 41% @ 2.36
Murphy - 40% @ 1.82
Deledio - 38% @ 1.82
Dal Santo - 37% @ 2.08
Chapman - 33% @ 2.36
Bolton - 29% @ 2.13
Bartel - 28% @ 2.42
Tuck - 21% @ 1.57
Cornes - 20% @ 2.17
Johncock - 17% @ 2.00
Bruce - 11% @ 2.00

There arent too many surprises here, but what stood out to me:

- Swan and Pendlebury are side by side, however Scott has the upper hand in the BOG department.

- KPFs are thought not to be great pollers, however Franklin and Riewoldt suggest otherwise.  They are simply less consistent, however when they play well they often poll.

- Goddard has 3 team mates above him on this list, and will struggle to top his  teams polling this year.

- Mitchell (not on this list) along with Franklin, are far better pollers than Hodge.

And finally to my predictions for who will win the medal in 2011 (using last years top 5 as a guide):

We havent had a player go back to back since Harvey in 97 and 98, and Im not sure that Judd will win his third this year (though he still may win another).  Both Gibbs and Murphy were also slightly down on their previous years, and think theyll take more away from Judd this year than last.

Ablett, who has polled more than any other player over the last 3 years, will struggle to find as many votes at his new club.  If he has a belter, 20 votes is not out of the question, but in any case it wont be enough to win.

Swan doesnt poll enough threes to make him a likely contender in 11.  Hell need Pendlebury and Didak to drop off if he is to have any chance.

Selwood and Pendlebury are probably the best chances to take it out this year, with Selwood slightly ahead.  Pendles is a big 3 vote winner, and if he can string together enough good games, he is a serious contender.  Selwood is second behind Judd in his ability to get noticed by the umpires over the last 3 years, and with Ablett now gone, there will be plenty more threes on offer for the young champ.

Outside of these guys, I think both Watson and Boak can potentially finish very high up the leaderboard - but this is dependent on their sides doing well.  I dont see Port doing overly well this year, so Watson is the better smokey.