Tim Taranto has become the first Richmond player for more than 40 years to win the Jack Dyer Medal in his debut season at the Club.
The star midfielder, recruited by the Tigers from Greater Western Sydney during last year’s trade period, was rewarded for his superb first-up season at Punt Road with the 2023 Best and Fairest award in last night’s count at the Crown Palladium.
You have to go all the way back to 1982 for the previous time a Richmond player captured the Jack Dyer Medal in his inaugural season with the Club.
On that occasion, it was brilliant centreman Maurice Rioli Sr., who had transferred to the Tigers from WAFL club South Fremantle where he had been a star for several seasons.
There have been just three other players throughout Richmond’s history to be awarded the Best and Fairest following their first seasons in the Yellow and Black.
Barry Rowlings, a highly-skilled, speedy centreman in Hawthorn’s 1976 premiership team, won the 1979 Jack Dyer Medal.
Ian Stewart, a dual Brownlow Medallist and outstanding centreman at St Kilda, collected the Jack Dyer Medal in 1971, as well as a third Brownlow.
Ron Durham, a top-class full-back from Bachcus Marsh, was the first to accomplish the feat, winning the Tigers’ Best and Fairest in 1943 and also playing in the Club’s premiership side that year.
Meanwhile, Richmond’s historian Rhett Bartlett reports that Tiger champion Dustin Martin now has the most top-three finishes in the Jack Dyer Medal.
Martin, who was runner-up to Tim Taranto in the 2023 count, has finished top three nine times, which is one more than Kevin Bartlett and Wayne Campbell.
His top-three Jack Dyer Medal results are:
2011 – third.
2013 – second.
2014 – third.
2015 – second.
2016 – first.
2017 – first.
2018 – third.
2020 – second.
2023 – second.
