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Football Athlete – Simon Black

Simon Black stamped himself as one of the truly elite midfielders of the modern era when he won the game’s most coveted invidual honour in 2002, the Brownlow Medal.

It was the ultimate reward for the ultimate team player, who has the best peripheral vision and hard ballgetting ability since dual Brownlow Medallist Greg Williams. Black simply keeps on getting the ball in packs and feeding it out to teammates. His wiry but strong frame absorbs plenty of punishment, yet Black is never hurried.

He collected a whopping 583 possessions from 25 games in 2002, and finished runner-up in four media awards for Player of the Year voting. Black did win his second Merrett-Murray Medal, making him the sixth player in history to win back-to-back best and fairests in back-to-back premiership years. He was also the sixth man in the 107-year history of the AFL/VFL to win the Brownlow and club champion award in a premiership year.

Black started and finished the season in sensational style, and invariably produced his best against the best opposition going around. He slaughtered Port Adelaide in the first half of the preliminary final, and collected 22 possessions in the grand final despite the tight tag of Scott Burns.

Black registered his 100th game for the Lions in the grand final, but it passed by almost unnoticed given his once-in-a-lifetime week where he became the third member of the Lions midfield to win a Brownlow alongside Jason Akermanis and Michael Voss. They made more history on grand final day by becoming the first trio of awarded Brownlow Medallists to play in a premiership team together.

Black had stood tall in the biggest crunch game of the home and away season when he helped steer the Lions to a magnificent Round 10 win over Essendon at the Gabba. His effort against Geelong at Kardinia Park in Round 21 was also one out of the box. He collected 34 possessions, but the way he burrowed under packs and fed out handballs to teammates, and followed up the ball with second and third efforts, was awe-inspiring. Remarkably, taggers made life difficult for Black in the opening month of 2001, but he quickly learnt to shake them. He certainly had a day out against the Kangaroos in Round 2 though, breaking the game open with 14 possessions in the third term alone.

Black has built his game in each of his five seasons to date, so look out opponents in 2003! After taking the football world by storm in 1999, he underlined his ability by finishing equal seventh in the club champion voting in 2000 despite missing four games with a broken hand. He actually missed five games in six weeks due to illness as well, yet returned as if he had never been away, teaming superbly with Voss over the last six weeks of the season.

His outstanding vision and ability to feed the ball to teammates from traffic is a gift, and many good judges then were tipping even bigger things for the likeable left-footer if he got a full season out of his body in 2001, which he duly did. Black led the league in the critical centre clearances category on a per games basis in 2000, and was second to Geelong terrier Garry Hocking in hard-ball gets, beating even club champion skipper Voss, a man he very much admires.

Black was recruited from WA after just two senior games with East Fremantle, and was a revelation in his 1998 rookie season with the Lions, and an equally big ‘hit’ on the entire AFL scene in ’99. An All-Australian U18 selection in 1997, he was regarded as a giant bonus when chosen by the Lions at No 31 in the 1997 AFL National Draft and lived right up to expectations, playing nine AFL games in his first League campaign to win the club’s ‘Best First-Year Player’ Award. Instead of suffering `the second-year’ blues’ he became one of the most dangerous midfielders in the game the following year.

Born in Mt Isa, Black was something of nomad in his early years before his family settled in Perth. A product of Corpus Christie College, he played his junior football at suburban Bullcreek, south of Perth.

Chosen in the All-Australian team at the 1997 National U18 carnival after WA lost the grand final to the Victorian Metro