Having engineered the Lions’ dominant second half performance in the grand final, Brisbane midfielder Will Ashcroft cemented his meteoric rise to the summit of the AFL by securing a second successive Norm Smith medal.
The 21-year-old with the flowing blond mane became just the third player after Andrew McLeod and Dustin Martin to have won the grand final’s best player in consecutive years. With just 58 games to his name, few would dare put a ceiling on what the Lions’ father-son pick might achieve with another decade in the game.
