The voting system which produced controversial winners of the Mark of the Year and Goal of the Year competitions this season is almost certain to be scrapped in 2018.
Essendon's Joe Daniher was named as winner of the Mark of the Year, while Daniel Rioli took out Goal of the Year, during the Brownlow Medal count on Monday - announcements that caused plenty of raised eyebrows.
At issue is the public online vote for the awards - which effectively gives fans the power to decide who wins. And if one club's supporter base gets organised and mobilised, for example, they can skew the voting.
Daniher won the award for his screamer against St Kilda in Round 17, earning 52 per cent of the public vote ahead of Jeremy Howe's 41 per cent for his brilliant mark against Melbourne in Round 12. (Howe's teammate Brodie Grundy was third on 7 per cent.)
But most judges rated Howe's speccie as the year's best - and that group included Collingwood president Eddie McGuire and Howe's manager Ben Niall.
"I just think that the AFL have got to stop the marketing department taking over these major awards," McGuire said. "For it to go to a popular vote - ie whose got the most active cheer squad at any one stage ... can we leave commercial activity out of it for five minutes?"
At one of the myriad grand final lunches this week, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan was asked what he thought about the Daniher decision specifically.
"Ah yes," he said, slightly sheepishly. "I think we'll need to revisit that next year."
So expect some kind of expert panel to be formed to replace the online fan vote.
Rioli won the Goal of the Year award ahead of favourite Eddie Betts, which also caused a commotion, largely because Rioli's effort - a banana on the run at the MCG in Round 3 - did not even win the best goal of the round back in April.
That honour went to Carlton captain Marc Murphy's whose checkside effort scored 55 percent of the public vote, ahead of Rioli's with 37 percent (and Collingwood's Adam Treloar on 8 percent).
But Rioli's goal was one of five 'lucky loser' goals added to the original list of 23 weekly winners, making 28 short-listed finalists.
For Howe and Betts, there was also a financial cost in being pipped for the top awards.
Howe's manager Ben Niall said the Collingwood star would miss out on up to $40,000 in prizemoney, endorsement bonuses and image rights