Clubs, in two forms: the sides a player turned out for, and the one he debuted with. Around them the board uses the season a player first appeared, the medals he won, and the games he racked up. Club identity does more work in this rotation than in any other.
The league’s own, the Brownlow foremost, by name and by year. An award group here is four men who each took the same medal home, which spans the competition’s history rather than a single era of it.
Games played, at the thresholds the sport itself celebrates — three hundred games being the one that defines a career. Longevity is the milestone this code respects most, and the board follows that.
They appear: surnames that are also animals or objects, unconnected to any club or era. They are the groups that catch out the fan who knows the football best, because football knowledge is precisely no help.
No. The first-season groups reach back across the decades of the competition, so a board can set a current player beside someone who debuted generations earlier at the same club.
