Fremantle fans had little to get enthused about in a 2016 AFL season that finished with just four wins and 18 losses - and it appears the umpires felt a similar way.
While the Dockers' lone All-Australian shortlist member Lachie Neale was a predictable leading votegetter for Fremantle with 20 votes, there was daylight to the runner-up.
![Between them, Luke Shuey, Josh Kennedy and Andrew Gaff had 48 Brownlow votes - three more than the whole of the Freo ...](/web/20160929102722im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/p/q/2/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.grpost.png/1474963537112.jpg)
And daylight turned out to be Nat Fyfe (four votes), who played only four full games and then part of the round five loss to Carlton, before being ruled out for the rest of the season with a broken leg.
Equally damning was the fact West Coast's three leaders in the poll - Andrew Gaff, middy-maestro Josh Kennedy and Matt Priddis - had 55 votes between them, 10 more than every Fremantle player received.
In fact, taking Neale out of the equation, the rest of Fremantle's list got only four more votes than Gaff.
The count's record-breaking winner Patrick Dangerfield had 35 votes , to be only 10 votes short of matching the cumulative tally of every Docker, one vote shy of Essendon's club tally of 36 votes and a whopping 15 votes clear of the total number of votes awarded to all the Brisbane Lions.
Whether Neale's dominance at the Dockers carries over to the club's Doig Medal count on October 8 remains to be seen. The midfielder, who signed a new deal to stay at Freo this season, will start a red-hot favourite but it was only last year that Brownlow medallist Fyfe was tipped out by Aaron Sandilands (albeit after late-season injury worries).
Neale can be expected to be harder pressed by teammates Michael Walters and Stephen Hill than he was on Brownlow night (just five votes between them).