Get rid of captains, re-jig the Brownlow

Now that we've reached the new age of football, everybody's got managers, everybody's got conditioning coaches, everybody's got personal trainers, it's about time we got rid of the captain.

The captain's a thing of the past and has been for the last three or four years.

They have leadership groups now and there's no real place for a captain out on the football field.

They have line coaches like the Americans, a forward line coach, a back line coach, midfield coach, specialist marking coaches, ruck coaches and head coaches, the captain is just a waste of time.

I'm afraid things like the captaincy and Brownlow Medal have got to be re-jigged.

The Brownlow Medal is a thing of the past.

Fairest and best? It reminds me of blokes running around with a white handkerchief signalling the ball's out of bounds.

It's from a bygone era, it's finished.

They've got to move on, they've got to create a panel of nine people who go and watch a game every week to make a judgment on voting.

Someone who knows the game, knows what's happening.

Take the example of David Zaharakis, you would never consider him to be a champion footballer but he won Essendon's best-and-fairest last year.

He wasn't outstanding like Jobe Watson or Michael Hurley but he did the job asked of him by the coach.

This is what's got to happen, the league have got to step in and invite people who know what they're talking about in football and make them accountable for the Brownlow Medal.

Still call it the Brownlow Medal but take it out of the hands of the umpires because, in actual fact, umpires have usually never played the game of football, don't understand the tactics, don't understand the position of players or what their roles are and they vote at the end of it on the most important award going around.

It's a bit like the Norm Smith Medal - the journalists' medal. Every now and then journalists rotate, sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong.

I would never vote on netball because I don't know enough about it, sometimes some football scribes shouldn't vote on football because they don't know enough about it.

But it's a new era now and we've got to revamp it, we've gone the American way, I suppose we should go on and become truly American.