NICK Daicos will have no trouble collecting his second E. W. Copeland Trophy at Crown Palladium on Friday night, but the voting system will look different in 2026.  

The 23-year-old won his first Brownlow Medal in the same room last Monday night, polling a record 47 votes to win by an equal record margin of 11 votes, following a brilliant season where he won a second Leigh Matthews Trophy and was named All-Australian for a fourth time.

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Collingwood has tweaked the voting system for the club's best and fairest to reward "extreme games", as Magpies coach Craig McRae forecast in March.

Under the previous system, McRae, senior assistant Hayden Skipworth and the three line coaches – this year they are Jordan Roughead, Matthew Boyd and Tyson Goldsack – is asked to vote on every player after each game, allocating 0-4 votes on their overall impact on a game.

The maximum number of votes a player could receive per round is 20 votes. 

Now a player can collect up to six votes from each coach for a maximum of 30 per round.

Collingwood reviewed the Copeland Trophy system last off-season after Darcy Cameron beat Daicos to win his best and fairest. 

The Magpies didn't want to take away from Cameron's 2025 season as he stamped himself as one of the premier rucks in the AFL after finishing second behind Daicos in 2024 Copeland Trophy. 

But as McRae first publicly detailed last October, he thought there should be a mechanism to better recognise brilliant performances, just like other clubs do. 

Daicos polled a staggering three Brownlow votes 13 times in 2026, collecting votes in 18 of the 22 games he featured in across the home and away season.

Expect him to poll close to 30 votes in plenty of those games after arguably the most dominant season ever produced by an individual.