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21 YEARS ago, on 22 September 1997, AFL chief executive Wayne Jackson stood at the podium of the Crown Palladium in Melbourne on the AFL’s night of nights and continued reading the votes in the Brownlow Medal.

Said Jackson: “Round 2, Port Adelaide v Essendon, three votes, Port Adelaide, B Lyle.”

It was a moment in history. In Port’s first year in the AFL, Brayden Lyle, the 24-year-old homegrown midfielder, originally drafted by West Coast before gleefully returning to Alberton for the Power’s AFL entry, received the club’s first Brownlow votes.

Having skippered the Power in the club’s AFL debut a week earlier in the absence of the suspended Gavin Wanganeen, vice-captain Lyle had 35 possessions and kicked a goal in a 33-point loss to Essendon at Football Park.

It was a performance that stood alone as the Port Adelaide possession record in the AFL until 2002, when it was matched by Adam Kingsley and Josh Francou, and was finally bettered in 2003 when Nick Stevens had 37 possessions.

It was the first of just 14 times in 485 games and 21 seasons from 1997-2017 that a Port player earned maximum Brownlow votes in a beaten side.

And to this day the 33-point deficit remains the biggest in club history from which a Port player has plucked three votes.

Lyle earned the first three of the club’s now 1423 Brownlow votes.

Last season Travis Boak struck another first when he became the first to top 100 Brownlow votes for the club, while Boak and Francou share the honour of having led the Power vote most – four times each.

Francou boasts the highest finish on a Brownlow Medal leaderboard when he was second to Brisbane’s Simon Black (25 votes) in 2002, while Wanganeen was closest to a medal win for Port Adelaide – to add to his 1993 Brownlow success with Essendon - when he finished one vote behind the joint winners in 2003.

He polled 21 votes to finish equal fourth with Hawthorn’s Shane Crawford behind a three-way tie between Adelaide’s Mark Riccuito, Collingwood’s Nathan Buckley and Sydney’s Adam Goodes.

Boak and Warren Tredrea share the distinction of having polled the most three-vote ratings at 16. 

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