Records tumble, new faces emerge and familiar patterns continue.

All in a year’s work in the AFL. All in a night’s action at the Brownlow Medal count.

A legend signs off
Dane Swan played just one per cent of one match in season 2016. We all know about the shattered foot that ended his career against Sydney in round one, but little did we know that it would be his previous meeting at the SCG that would earn him his final Brownlow vote.

GALLERY: Photos from the red carpet.

Swan polled a single vote for his 39 disposal effort in a narrow loss to the Swans at the venue in round 20, 2015. He would not touch the ball once this year.

He retires with 186 career votes (more than any other Magpie in the club’s history) and the 2011 Medal around his neck.

A record breaks
Swan made history when he was crowned the game’s fairest and best player in 2011. He polled 34 votes, a record no player had matched in the previous 88 years.

Then along came Patrick Dangerfield.

The record stood just five years before Dangerfield stormed to 35 votes courtesy of his best on ground performance for Geelong against Brisbane in round 23, 2016.

Dangerfield’s tally will take some beating.

Happily ever after
Was it the new Black and White jumper?

Maybe the shock of blond hair that favoured Crawford, Woewodin and Akermanis?

Whatever it was, Adam Treloar wasted no time catching the umpire’s eyes during his first year at the Holden Centre.

He polled 21 votes, a mile ahead of his previous season-high of seven in 2015 while playing for Greater Western Sydney.

BROWNLOW VOTES: The Pies who polled in 2016.

By comparison, Nathan Buckley polled just seven votes in his first season at Collingwood.

Other recent newbies haven’t come close: Luke Ball polled one vote in 2010 while Darren Jolly polled just three. Shane Woewodin fared well with 12 in 2003, while one-time Medal winner Brad Hardie went voteless in his two games in 1992.

Up there with the best
Treloar’s 21-vote season ranks favourably when placed in the context of Collingwood history.

Below is a list of Collingwood’s highest vote getters by season since the Medal was introduced in 1924.
34 – Dane Swan (2011)
32 – Des Fothergill (1940, winner – tied)
26 – Dane Swan (2013)
25 – Dane Swan (2012), Len Thompson (1972, winner)
24 – Nathan Buckley (1998), Scott Pendlebury (2011), Dane Swan (2010)
23 – Marcus Whelan (1939, winner)
22 – Nathan Buckley (2003, winner – tied), Peter Moore (1979, winner), Bob Rose (22, 1953)
21 – David Cloke (1984), Scott Pendlebury (2010, 2013), Len Thompson (1973), Adam Treloar (2016)

Notes
- Cloke finished second to Moore in the 1984 count. By then, Moore was playing for Melbourne.
- Billy Picken polled 41 votes and Len Thompson polled 34 in 1977, during a two year period in which both field umpires awarded votes on a 3-2-1 basis.
- No Medal was awarded between 1942 and 1945

A fast start
Mason Cox’s whirlwind year continued when he polled his first Brownlow vote in just his fourth season game.

Cox earned it with four goals and 11 hitouts in a 78-point thumping of Brisbane in round eight.

Cox and fellow first-time Magpie pollers Treloar, Brodie Grundy, Jeremy Howe and James Aish took the number of Collingwood players to poll a Brownlow vote to 342.