Brett Deledio first won Richmond’s best and fairest award in 2008.
It came at the conclusion of a season where things did not quite pan out for him individually from the start. It also came surprisingly in the shadow of a club legend’s best ever season (arguably).
In his fourth year at Punt Road, the former no.1 draft pick put a positional change aside to claim the Jack Dyer Medal at the age of 21, beating Shane Tuck and Matthew Richardson - the latter having made the All-Australian side and finished a close-up third in the Brownlow Medal.
Deledio explained how that year he was set to take up a deep forward role for coach Terry Wallace before quickly aborting the move and shifting up the field where he was far more dangerous for the Tigers who would narrowly miss finals.
“At the end of ’07, ‘Plough’ challenged me to become a bit heavier and become a full-forward,” he said on SEN’s This Is Your Sporting Life.
“So I did. I got up to 92kg, the heaviest I’ve ever been, and was just going to play full-forward for the whole year. To try and be that smaller Brad Johnson type full-forward out of the square.
“It lasted all of about one game. I kicked two in the first week but I wasn’t doing what I thought I could do so I pushed up the ground just as that half-forward. Those were the days when the half-forward went up one side and the half-back went up the other and you sort of had a fair bit of free rein.
“I played on that (flank) for the whole year pretty much. I knew I was going to go ok in the best and fairest (but) I never had any idea (I’d win). That was obviously Matty Richardson’s best year. In the Brownlow he finished third and he was dominating on the wing.”
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Deledio recalls the winning moment with great fondness as he had just been crowned the best player at a club with plenty of rich history and a plethora of star players before him.
“The biggest things for me and what I look back fondly on, I had my whole family there,” he added.
“I thought I’d go ok but to have a full table of my immediate family and my cousins, that was the most special thing. And then when a whole crowd of 1500 people give you a standing ovation, it stirs the hairs on the back of your neck.
“It was pretty special because it is such a proud club and a big club with so many proud members.
“That was the brightest part of some darker days that we had earlier on. We’d won a wooden spoon (in 2007) by then and things weren’t going as flash as we though, so that was really nice.”
Deledio kicked 28 goals and averaged more than 24 disposals during the 2008 season in one of his most prolific campaigns.
He would add the 2009 Jack Dyer Medal to his list of accolades before finishing up at Richmond in 2016 after 243 games and 182 goals. He played a further 32 games for the GWS Giants over three seasons prior to retiring at the culmination of last season.