The Brisbane Lions have regained top spot on the AFL’s Rising Star Leaderboard after Kai Lohmann’s Round 10 nomination this week.

Lohmann is the club’s 51^st nomination since the inception of the award in 1993, and sees the Lions take back outright #1 spot on the nominations leaderboard for an award now in its 32^nd year known as the ‘Rookies Brownlow Medal’.

For a fortnight the club had to share top spot with Melbourne after Celeb Windsor’s Round 8 nomination saw the Demons, too, post their ‘half century’.

Essendon (47), Hawthorn (45) and West Coast (44) complete the top five from a total of 706 weekly nominations.

Brisbane also heads the overall Rising Star Leaderboard with four after Nathan Buckley (1993) and Chris Scott (1994) were the first two winners, and were followed by Daniel Rich (2009) and Lewis Taylor (2014)

Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney have three outright winners, and Collingwood, Essendon, Hawthorn, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide and St.Kilda two.

Greater Western Sydney and the Western Bulldogs are the only clubs yet to produce an outright Rising Star, which is judged by a nominated panel at the end of each year after the AFL has awarded a weekly nomination.

To be eligible a player must be under the age of 21 at 1 January that year, and have played 10 or fewer AFL games prior to the start of the season. A player can only be nominated once per season. If a player is suspended during the season he may still be nominated but will not be eligible to win the overall award.

Brisbane has had two dual nominees – Luke Power (1998-99) and Alex Witherden (2017-18).

While final votes were not made public in the first three years, Taylor won his Rising Star crown in the closest vote in 2014 – he beat the Western Bulldogs’ Marcus Bontempelli by one vote (39-38).

Rich polled 45 votes in 2009 to beat Adelaide’s Andy Otten (30) and Essendon’s Tayte Pears (28).

Will Ashcroft, denied a likely Rising Star win last year by injury, was the first Brisbane player to finish second, while five Brisbane players have finished third – Simon Black (1999), Beau McDonald (2000), Richard Hadley (2004), Tom Rockliff (2010) and Witherden (2018).

James Aish, now at Fremantle, was fourth playing with Brisbane behind Taylor in 2014, while five Brisbane players finished fifth – Daniel Bradshaw (1997), Luke Power (1999), Jed Adcock (2005), Eric Hipwood (2017) and Darcy Wilmot (2023). Brandon Starcevich was sixth in 2020 and Cam Rayner seventh in 2018.

Tom Doedee, in rehabilitation from his third knee reconstruction on the eve of his Brisbane debut, was runner-up to Collingwood’s Jaidyn Stephenson in 2018, and Dayne Beams, Brisbane captain in 2017-18, was fourth behind Rich playing with Collingwood in 2009.

The Fitzroy quartet of Chris Johnson, Jarrod Molloy, John Barker and Nick Carter, who wore Brisbane colors post-merger, were among six Fitzroy nominees in the first four years of the award. Simon Hawking, who was another inaugural Brisbane Lions signing but never played for the club, and Matthew Primus, who rejected a move to Brisbane, completed the Fitzroy nominee list.

Joe Daniher was nominated when playing at Essendon in 2014, Charlie Cameron at Adelaide in 2015, and Josh Dunkley at the Western Bulldogs in 2016.

Brisbane’s full list of Rising Star nominees, which includes 12 current players, is:-

 *  Current players in bold.