IT'S the medal that has been in hibernation for the past 16 years and only one Collingwood footballer has been fortunate enough to be a recipient.

Gavin Brown won not only one but two EJ Whitten Medals, the award handed out to the best player for Victoria in State of Origin games between 1985 and 1999.

It hasn't been awarded since North Melbourne's Robert Harvey was presented with the most recent one in 1999 - the last time that Victoria played in a traditional state match.

The Big V did make a cameo in an invitational match against an All-Stars team in 2008 - to help celebrate the 150th year of Australian football - but that was a special one off game and it brought about a special one-off Allen Aylett Medal.

As this week marked the 20th anniversary of Ted Whitten's emotional farewell motorcade around the MCG, it is fitting to look back on the superb state record of Brown.

He is one of only four men to have won multiple EJ Whitten Medals. The others are Fitzroy's Paul Roos (1985 and '88), Richmond's Dale Weightman (1986 and '90), and St Kilda's Robert Harvey (1992-93, '96).

Harvey also happens to be the current Collingwood senior assistant coach.

Brown is the only Magpie to have won a Whitten Medal, with his wins coming in one of the most famous state games in 1989, as well as in 1997 - both against South Australia.

Here, we take a look at the two matches that Brown won Victorian state football's highest individual honour.

1989: Victoria 22. 17 (149) defeated South Australia 9.9 (63), MCG. Crowd: 91,960. Whitten Medal: Gavin Brown

This was one of the biggest State of Origin matches between Victoria and South Australia when a packed crowd of 91,960 fans crammed into the MCG.

It was the first time a state clash had been played at the home of football in almost a decade, and the first time at the MCG against the Croweaters in almost 20 years.

And it brought together two of the greatest forwards in Australian football history - Tony Lockett and Jason Dunstall - in a star-studded, if controversial attack for the Victorian side. The controversy came from the fact that Dunstall was a Queenslander, and other non-Victorians, Terry Daniher (from the small NSW town of Ungarie) and Darrin Pritchard (from Tasmania) also wore the famous Big V jumper that day.

If Lockett and Dunstall wasn't enough up forward, Daniher was in there for good measure as well as Dermott Brereton, who would become a Magpie six years later.

South Australian critics didn't cry foul. They just doubted that the pairing of 'Plugger' and 'Piggy' as Lockett and Dunstall were known could actually work in the same team.

How wrong they would be.

Lockett, in his first game for a month, would kick five goals, Dunstall would nail four and 14 marks, Brereton would score three, and the Vics would kick 22.17 (149) to 9.9 (63).

Brown was one of two Magpies in the 1989 Victorian side - Shane Morwood was the other.

But the kid from Templestowe, who was 21 at the time, had already started to establish himself as a player of the future with Collingwood by this stage. He was in his third senior season with the Magpies, having played in the club's under 19s premiership side in 1986 and being part of a fresh wave of Collingwood players who were starting to look as if they might be capable of helping to end the club's long premiership drought at some stage.

1989 was the year that Brown went from kid with promise to a legitimate star. Collingwood fans already knew it before that July day at the MCG, but footy fans of all persuasions came to know just how good the player known as 'Rowdy', given to him with a touch of irony due to his quiet, reserved nature, after that state game.

Brown was handed the unfamiliar No.9 jumper from Whitten that day and allocated the wing. Just as crucially, he was given the task of lining up on Greg Anderson, who was in his second season with Essendon.

In an era of the mullets, few were as well known for their coiffures as Anderson, and he was at his best one of the most dangerous players on the wing. Brown not only stopped him that day, he ran off him superbly.

Brown and fellow wingman Pritchard accounted for South Australia's players who spent time on the wing - Anderson, Craig Bradley and Steven Stretch.

When the final siren sounded, the most excited and emotional man was - as usual - Whitten. With more than a hint of theatrics, he yelled: "How proud am I? We've got the title back. The state title means a hell of a lot to me, and to win the title back here is big, and I mean big - bigger than Lockett!

"I don't care where we play them. We'll play them in a paddock with four trees at each end of the ground. We'll still win."

Brown had 29 touches (12 kicks and 17 handballs as well as nine marks) in what was a Victorian domination, a victory by 86 points.

He was unaware when his name was first read out as the winner. That was because of the roar of the crowd drowned out the official announcement over the loud speakers.

Brown told the Sun newspaper after the game: "I didn't even hear them call it out. I was shocked. It's an honour (to win the medal). "

"It's absolutely fantastic and to come off the ground with a win is even better. The boys have been looking forward to this for a while.

"Training's been good all week, and this was the one everybody had been talking about. Playing in front of big crowds in pressure games all helps, I think."

The Herald's Ron Reed talked about the joy and excitement in the Victorian camp. He wrote: "In every way it was a tribute to (Victorian coach Bill) Goggin, E. J. Whitten (who looked as day turned to night as if he was going to sleep with the Malcolm Blight Cup) and the other selectors, and proved again that football need not be the complicated affair that many insist on making it."

"Nowhere was that truer than with the controversial twin full-forward set-up. In hindsight, why on earth would anyone ever doubt its viability? You take the two best goal kickers in the country and let them go for it. Nothing more to it than that."

But there was sadness amongst the euphoria, and it would prove to be one of the tell-tale reasons why State-of-Origin football was already living on borrowed time at that stage.

The Big V's Andy Collins brought down his Hawthorn teammate Tony Hall in a tackle, and Hall's knee buckled under him. It was almost a worse-case scenario, and it would cost Hall a spot in the Hawks' premiership side a few months later.

"I think what happened was that he was running into goal and I've grabbed him and my forward momentum has taken him forward," Collins told the Herald.

"He has had his foot caught in the mud and I've just taken him down. His foot was still caught and his knee has stretched. I've landed on top of him, which has made it worse."

As Brown and his Victorian teammates celebrated with beer in the rooms after the game, Collins was immediately off to a private hospital to console with Hall - even though no one could blame him for what happened.

The Sun's Daryl Timms summed it all up after the game, penning: "The victory silenced the South Australians, who had the gall to suggest that a monument be built after they had won the title of Australian champions in last year's bi-centennial championships in Adelaide.

"Fortunately, no such monument was built because after Saturday's insipid performance it would have been turned into a tomb.

"Such was the might and strength of Victoria that coach Bill Goggin said that the two-hour contest would live on in the memories of many of his players for the rest of their days."

1997: Victoria 13.15 (93) defeated South Australia 12.13 (85), Football Park. Crowd: 40,595. Whitten Medal: Gavin Brown

Gavin Brown was at the other end of his career when he won his second EJ Whitten Medal, and so much had changed for him and his football club when it happened in 1997.

A year after winning his first Whitten Medal, Brown had been a key member of Collingwood's drought-breaking 1990 premiership side, and his career had continued on an upward trajectory in the years after.

He was appointed captain of the Magpies in 1994, and had overcome some injury issues which caused him - and the club - more than a bit of grief during the mid-1990s.

By 1997, he was back in the form that had made him the player that he was - tough, courageous and a leader of men as much by his deeds on the field as anything else.

That inspirational leadership was rewarded when in the lead-up to the 1997 state game against South Australia at Football Park, Brown received the honour of being appointed captain of his state, when he narrowly pipped St Kilda duo Nathan Burke and Robert Harvey for the role.

State-of-Origin footy was almost on life support given the birth of the Adelaide Crows in 1991, but in what would be the penultimate clash between the Vics and the Croweaters, it would be a match to remember.

Brown's appointment as Vics skipper would be one of the highest honours that he would ever receive in his football career.

"It's a great honor," Brown said at the time. "When I was a kid I just loved state football, so to end up as captain of a state side is a dream come true."

At a function in the lead-up to the match, prominent Pies supporter and motor sport legend Peter Brock made a motivational speech for the Victorian side, telling them to take nothing for granted.

Brock said: "You don't get that many opportunities to wear a state guernsey. You might never get an opportunity to wear it."

This time Brown's Victorian coach was his former Collingwood coach, Leigh Matthews, who was then doing some time in the media in between his stint with Collingwood and his years with Brisbane.

The Vics struggled in the early stages of the game as the parochial Football Park crowd got behind the South Australian team. The home side led by three points 21 minutes into the opening term, before the visitors put together a string of four goals (three of them from Matthew Lloyd) in the space of six minutes.

The South Australians fought hard in the second term and pegged back some of the lead, but three more goals before half-time pushed the ascendancy again in Victoria's favour.

And when Chris Grant nailed a goal just before the three-quarter-time siren, the Vics took a 17-point break into the final change.

That lead was extinguished when the Croweaters kicked three early goals to take the lead. But, steeled by the hard work of players such as Brown, the Vics managed to score goals through Grant and Glenn Archer to score a gutsy victory by eight points.

The medal came down to two players - Brown and Harvey - and although of the scribes favoured the St Kilda midfielder, the medal went to the Magpie, and no one within the inner sanctum would have argued.

Brown had pipped the likes of Harvey for the captaincy, and now he had done the same with the medal. Harvey had 32 touches, but Brown's 17 disposals in stopping the dangerous Darren Jarman was invaluable.


The Herald Sun summed it up: "The late E.J. Whitten, who did for state football what Barnum and Bailey did for circuses, would have loved it."