It was Monday night, 21 September 1987, when AFL CEO Ross Oakley stepped up to the podium at the Hyatt on Collins in Melbourne to begin his first call of the medal count.

With the eyes of the football world on him, Oakley started with the first game of the first round, which was the Brisbane Bears’ shock Friday night win over North Melbourne at the MCG.

“One vote, Brisbane, P Walsh,” Oakley said, before going on to announce that the new Club had swept the votes, with captain Mark Mickan receiving two, and Brenton Phillips three.

As much as Phillips is remembered for his three-vote recognition of a match-winning five goals at half forward it is Walsh who went into the record books as the recipient of the Bears' first Brownlow vote.

Aged 27 at the time, Walsh had a game-high 31 possessions on the wing as the Bears, labelled a bunch of misfits and has-beens by the football media in the lead-up to their big-time debut, led at every change to win 19-23 (137) to 15-14 (104).

Walsh was recruited by Bears for the Club’s entry to the AFL after 22 games at Collingwood in 1983 and 40 games at Richmond in 1984-86.

After he left the Bears at the end of 1991 he was an assistant-coach at Geelong, West Coast and Port Adelaide before winning the Adelaide senior coaching position in 2015.

After this historic one-vote rating in the Bears’ first game Walsh went on to win the Club's inaugural best & fairest in 1987.

Only one other time did he figure in the Brownlow votes when playing in Brisbane – when he earned two votes in a 25-point Round 17 loss to Fitzroy at Princes Park in 1987.

Still, 31 years on, he fills the number one spot on the Club’s list of all-time Brownlow medal vote-getters.

Forever he will be part of the Club’s rich Brownlow history alongside three Brisbane winners of the game’s highest individual honour and the eight Fitzroy winners before them.

Heading into the 2018 count in Melbourne on Monday night, Walsh is remembered as the first of 112 Brisbane players to have polled a total of 1856 votes, including 1996 winner Michael Voss, 2001 winner Jason Akermanis, and 2002 winner Simon Black.

Black has most Brownlow votes for the Club at 184 from Voss at 150 and Jonathan Brown at 112.

The Club’s top 20 vote-getters since 1987 are:

Black has led the vote-count six times from Voss (5) and Tom Rockliff (5).

Black’s winning 25-vote tally in 2002 is the most by a Brisbane player in a season.

Twelve Brisbane players have had a total of 23 top 10 finishes, headed by Voss (6), Black (5) Brown (2) and Luke Power (2). Voss and Black have had three top five finishes each.

Twice the club has had three players in the top 10 in the same year – in 2001 it was Akermanis (1^st), Voss (equal 3^rd) and Black (equal 10^th) and 2004 it was Black (6^th) and Nigel Lappin and Luke Power (equal 7^th). Also, Black and Brown finished equal 4^th in 2009.

Top 10 finishes have been:

Beams, who was also equal 7^th in 2012 (19 votes) and equal 9^th in 2014 (16 votes) when playing with Collingwood, is strongly favoured to head the Lions' vote-count on Monday night.

And if the votes awarded by the AFL coaches in the AFLCA Player of the Year Award are used as a guide, Beams, runner-up to Zorko in the Lions Merrett-Murray Medal, is in line for a career-best Brownlow finish.

This is based on a conversion of the 5-4-3-2-1 votes awarded by both coaches after each game in the AFLCA Player of the Year Award into notional 3-2-1 Brownlow votes  - or ‘Coachlow’ votes - whereby Beams ranked fourth.

Under this system he would poll 20 ‘Coachlow’ votes to trail only Carlton’s Patrick Cripps (25.5), Hawthorn’s Tom Mitchell (24.5) and Melbourne’s Max Gawn (24) in a thrilling finish in which Cripps would pip Mitchell for top honours in the last round of matches.

Other Lions players to figure in the notional ‘Coachlow’ vote count would be Zorko (7), Stefan Martin (6.33), Hugh McCluggage (5.5), Harris Andrews (3.5), Tom Cutler (2.5), Luke Hodge (2.5), Eric Hipwood (2), Jerry Berry (1.5), Mitch Robinson (1), Charlie Cameron (0.5) and Josh Walker (0.33).

According to the Coaches Votes, Beams will be in contention for maximum Brownlow votes as many as seven times in Rounds 9-10-11-15-16-17-22.

Zorko could get three votes in Rounds 7-8-20, Martin likewise in Round 3, McCluggage in Round 9, Andrews in Round 12 and evergreen Hodge in Round 14.

Fitzroy, too, had a wonderfully proud Brownlow Medal record.

At the time of the merger at the end of 1996 they had won eight medals to sit equal third on the all-time list behind South Melbourne/Sydney (12) and Western Bulldogs (9), and level with Essendon and St Kilda.

Add the three Brisbane medals and the Lions, with 11 medals in total, sit second behind Sydney (14).

The Fitzroy domination of the 1930s was extraordinary. Not only did they win the Brownlow five times in this decade via Haydn Bunton (1931-32-35), Wilfred ‘Chicken’ Smallhorn (1933) and Dinny Ryan (1936), but in the same period Bunton was 2^nd in 1934, and Smallhorn was 6^th in 1934, equal 3^rd in 1938 and 5^th in 1939.

Fitzroy’s 333-game games record-holder Kevin Murray had his own period of domination through the 1960’s. Not only did he win the medal in 1969 but he was 2^nd in 1960, equal 2^nd in 1962, equal 5^th in 1963, 7^th in 1964 and 3^rd in 1968. He was equal 7^th in 1967 despite stepping away from the Club in the prime of his career to captain-coach East Perth in 1965-66. 

Allan Ruthven was 5^th in 1946 and 6^th in 1948 in addition to his win in 1950, while in more recent times, Garry Wilson was 3^rd in 1978 and 2^nd in 1979, and Paul Roos was 3^rd in 1985 and 1986.

Murray was Fitzroy’s leading Brownlow vote-getter all-time with 178.

At the time of his retirement in 1974 he was second on the all-time vote list behind South Melbourne’s three-time winner Bob Skilton, and now, 44 years since his last game, he still sits equal 11^th on adjusted votes all-time.

He slips ahead of Leigh Matthews because 57 of his 202 actual votes were received in 1976-77, thereby giving him an adjusted votes tally of 173.5.

Geelong captain Joel Selwood went past Murray last year, and Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury needs 14 votes this year to do likewise.

Among players who have played a minimum 50 games, Bunton has the highest votes-per-game ratio in League history. Having played 119 home-and-away games for 122 votes, his ratio is 1.025.

Next best to the end of 2017 is Fremantle’s Nat Fyfe (0.984) and Geelong’s Patrick Dangerfield (0.868).