Trent Cotchin set a cracking pace with his performance in the 2012 Brownlow Medal, which was retrospectively awarded to him today by the AFL Commission.

The 26 votes that Cotchin polled that year were the second-highest ever recorded by a Tiger player under the 3-2-1 voting system, and the most since the Club’s champion ruckman, Roy Wright, won his second Brownlow in 1954 with 29 votes.

Richmond ‘Immortals’, Francis Bourke, 36 votes in 1976, and Kevin Bartlett, 45 votes in 1977, both polled more, but that was under a system, which was in place for only two seasons, whereby the two officiating field umpires at each match voted separately.

The then 22-year-old Cotchin stormed home in the 2012 Brownlow count, racking up 11 of a possible 12 votes during the final four rounds of the season.

Overall, he was adjudged best afield by the umpires on six occasions.

His total of 26 votes was five more than champion Richmond centreman Ian Stewart received, when he won the 1971 Brownlow (the last Tiger player to take out the game’s most prestigious individual award before Cotchin).

In 2012, Cotchin also equalled the Richmond record for polling Brownlow Medal votes in the most number of games throughout the course of a home-and-away season.

He polled votes in 11 games, which is the same as what Bill Morris achieved in 1948, when he won the Brownlow, Roy Wright, when he won his second Medal, in 1954, and Dustin Martin, when he finished third this year.