The Rock-Yerong Creek's Riley Budd out to defy history in Gerald Clear Medal vote count

Since the creation of the Farrer League Player of the Year in 2014, no player has been able to win both the coach's votes and the league medal in the same year.

Budd won the Farrer League Player of the Year by seven votes after a brilliant season in the midfield for the Magpies.

The 23-year-old Canberra-based footballer believes the race for this year's Gerald Clear Medal is open but acknowledged he'd be among the chances.

"To be honest, I kind of forgot the vote system was like a thing for quite a while this season," Budd said.

"I think my chances are fairly high, I guess. I mean there are some other really good players around like Kane Flack, Jack Reynolds, all these guys produce just as many good performances as I do so it really just depends on what the votes come down to.

"We're all just as good as each other, I'd say we all produce good stuff for our teams. For example, players like my brother Noah won't necessarily get the votes that someone like I would get but I would argue he's just as important to the team as I am."

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Budd played all his football in Canberra before joining the Magpies last season.

He says he has no history at polling in league medals and recalls watching last year's online count where he kicked the season off with two best-on-ground performances before never featuring again.

"I've never been. Before this season I've been more similar to a key defender and unless you're an absolute freak of a defender, you're not really getting votes every week," he said.

"A lot of these vote counts are dominated by midfielders so being put in the midfield role definitely puts me in a better spot to accumulate some votes but no, in the past I've never been one to rack up the votes at the counts."

Budd has quickly become a student of the Farrer League and named the likes of North Wagga's Kane Flack, Marrar's Jack Reynolds and Coleambally coach Luke Hillier as his main rivals.

"When you put a certain amount of time into something, you're going to become pretty interested in it. Players like Kane and Jack, not necessarily the more in and under players, the outside players, you can't not notice them," he said.

"They're breaking lines, they're making things happen. You can't not notice them. It will be interesting for sure.

"Somebody who I've always thought has killed us has been someone like Luke Hillier from Coleambally. Whenever we seem to play Coleambally he seems to get 50 touches. It's pretty hard to not notice someone when they're playing like that."

After Wednesday night's vote count in Wagga, Budd's focus will return to Saturday's preliminary final where TRYC will meet East Wagga-Kooringal.

The two teams have played on three occasions this year with the biggest margin being the Hawks' six-point win in the qualifying final.

Budd believes drier conditions will suit the Magpies.

"I'm hoping that it's dry conditions. I feel like one of our strengths, when we get going, is our skills. We can be pretty silky with our skills," he said.

"When we beat Marrar earlier in the year, we picked them apart with our skills. We didn't miss a kick, we weren't fumbley, we put pressure on, we just did all the basics right.

"If its dry on a big field, and if we can get that rolling again, where we're clean, we're not fumbley, we're hitting our kicks, we're pretty hard to stop. So hopefully we can bring that sort of form back.

"It was kind of that against North Wagga on the weekend but we tried to make it a bit more of a scrap because we were a bit bigger. But against EWK, they are bigger-bodied a lot of them, I feel like if we can do that like we did to Marrar earlier in the year, we can be pretty hard to stop so that's hopefully how it will be play out but you never know."

Matt Malone's Gerald Clear Medal selections

1 - Riley Budd (The Rock-Yerong Creek)

2 - Jack Reynolds (Marrar)

3 - Kane Flack (North Wagga)

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