\n Latest News\n <\/p>\n
\n Geelong star, Bailey Smith has finished third in the 2025 Brownlow Medal\n <\/p>\n
Bailey Smith’s stellar first season with the Geelong Football Club has been recognised, with the superstar midfielder finishing third in the 2025 Brownlow Medal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Polling a career-best 29 votes, Smith finished third behind winner Matt Rowell (39 votes) and runner-up Nick Daicos (32 votes), the highest finish in his Brownlow career.<\/p>\n
Across the course of the season, Smith polled votes in 13 different games, while recording six three-vote performances throughout the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It marks a superb individual year from the brilliant on-baller, after he shared the top honour in the AFLCA Champion Player of the Year Award a few weeks earlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – SEPTEMBER 22: Bailey Smith of the Cats is interviewed by Hamish McLachlan during the 2025 Brownlow Medal at Crown Palladium on September 22, 2025 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Josh Chadwick\/AFL Photos)<\/p>\n
Smith joined Geelong at the end of the 2024 season and quickly became a fan favourite, dominating through the middle of the ground and finding the football with ease each week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His debut in the Hoops was a sight to behold, torching Fremantle in the first round of the season with a 32 disposal outing, adding seven clearances and a goal to give a glimpse of what was to come in the year ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith would go on to accumulate 30 disposals or more on 14 different occasions throughout the 2025 season, equalling his career-high with a 43-disposal game against North Melbourne in Round 20.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He would finish the year with the highest disposal average of any player in the competition (31.4 per game), sitting in the AFL’s top 10 players for inside 50s, centre clearances and uncontested possessions.<\/p>\n
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – SEPTEMBER 22: Bailey Smith of the Cats look on at the 2025 Brownlow Medal on September 22, 2025 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Morgan Hancock\/Getty Images via AFL Photos)<\/p>\n
It caps off a remarkable comeback story from Smith who not only joined the Cats at the end of last season, but also bounced back from an entire year on the sidelines after a serious knee injury.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He carried that incredible form into September and played a pivotal role in the victory over Hawthorn last Friday, collecting 36 disposals and a goal to help the Cats book their spot in the Grand Final.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The star midfielder will make his second appearance in an AFL Grand Final, looking to become a premiership player for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latest News Geelong star, Bailey Smith has finished third in the 2025 Brownlow Medal Bailey Smith’s stellar first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-161059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}