‘Who will take home Charlie?’ is a question that will dominate the start of the biggest week on the AFL calendar when the Brownlow Medal is awarded on Monday night. Attached to the League’s highest individual accolade for over a century, Brownlow is one of the best recognised names in the game’s history. Most fans, however, know very little about the man himself. Yet, Charles Brownlow led a remarkable life, inextricably linked to his beloved hometown Geelong and its football club.
Brownlow was an entrepreneurial local businessman, a skilled craftsman, and widely admired for his community work and charitable endeavours. He was ubiquitous across the Geelong sporting landscape for a half-decade spanning from the late 1870s to the early 1920s, first as a competitor and increasingly as an administrator. Of course, this included 36 years as the club’s secretary.
It was Brownlow’s club role that anchored his longstanding service at the state and national levels. His Geelong foundations thereby enabled everything Brownlow accomplished in the upper echelons of the game’s administration for which he became universally respected as one of Australian football’s most influential figures. It was as Geelong secretary that Brownlow counted among the decisive cabal who not only made the courageous decision to secede from the Victorian Football Association (VFA) to form their rival Victorian Football League (VFL) in 1896-97, but also led this competition during its formative decades. Brownlow subsequently served as a longstanding VFL vice-president and chaired the League’s umpire and permit committee. From 1911, Brownlow was Victorian delegate to the code’s national governing body the Australasian Football Council (AFC), ultimately rising to the role of AFC president in 1919. Such was his reputation that there was unanimous agreement among his peers to mark his death with striking the League’s new best-and-fairest award as the Brownlow Medal in 1924.
Formative years
Born in Geelong on 25 July 1861, he was in fact the third in a line of five Charles Brownlows. His parents Charles and Eliza (née Whitaker) married in England in 1858, shortly before the goldrush attracted them to Australia. After a brief stint in Ballarat they soon settled in nearby Geelong. Charles Snr had been an apprenticed bookbinder in Oxford, but in his adopted hometown established himself as a prominent storeowner operating Brownlow’s China Warehouse in Moorabool Street just a few drop punts away from where GMHBA Stadium stands today.
Charles and Eliza raised a family of six children (four daughters, two sons). Their Wesleyan faith was the bedrock of Brownlow family life. Indeed, so strong was the family’s commitment that the leadlight ‘Brownlow Window’ remains a feature at Geelong’s Wesley Uniting Church in Yarra Street.
It is widely claimed that Charles Brownlow attended Geelong College, but the school’s own records confirm this is incorrect. This common misconception likely stems from two things: a student named Bromilow attended the school around this time; and Charles and his wife Matilda (née Barber) sent their only son there, so a Charles Brownlow did attend Geelong College but a generation later.
Skilled craftsman and businessman
Brownlow completed an apprenticeship as a silversmith, watchmaker, and jeweller under the legendary craftsman Edward Fischer—famous for sculpting the first Melbourne Cup winner’s trophy made in Australia (claimed in 1876 by future Geelong Football Club president Jim Wilson Snr whose St Albans Stud bred and trained winner Briseis). Brownlow inherited his father’s entrepreneurialism and aged 20 opened his own business. Besides watchmaking and work as a jeweller, it was Brownlow’s craftsmanship as a silversmith, particularly handcrafting trophies, which would prove especially beneficial. Fusing together his business acumen with his civic mindedness, Brownlow donated his bespoke trophies in support of all manner of local causes from churches, schools, and literary groups through to sporting clubs and even flower exhibitions. Brownlow’s benevolence helped countless local endeavours over the decades, while the goodwill engendered certainly did not hurt to support his business in return.
Sporting all-rounder and champion footballer
Blessed with good natural endurance and a sharp turn of pace, the athletic Brownlow won local races. His physiology aligned well with rowing, one of Brownlow’s greatest sporting loves that saw him win titles and later coach the Corio Bay Rowing Club. He maintained a lifelong passion for cricket, too, but never excelled with the willow or leathern sphere.
It was football where Brownlow shone. Playing for strong local junior club North Geelong as a teenager in the late 1870s, his talent was unmistakable. Geelong Football Club invited Brownlow down to trial in 1881, and aged 19 he immediately made the senior team. Brownlow debuted against Hotham (North Melbourne) at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground and played 18 games that first season. As was typical of the era, half of Geelong’s games were against inferior local outfits and the other half were against the highest quality metropolitan teams in the VFA, including Melbourne, Essendon, Carlton, and South Melbourne. In his debut season Brownlow even played in an intercolonial representative game at Corio Oval when South Australian visited Geelong in August 1881. In his second season, Brownlow was a mainstay of the Geelong team that claimed the 1882 VFA premiership.
Aged just 21 and entering his third season of VFA football, Brownlow was elected Geelong captain in 1883. He duly led the club to another premiership. As one of Geelong’s best players and skipper of the competition’s leading side, Brownlow was carving out a reputation as one of the most influential footballers in Victoria. Then, in the middle of the 1884 season, Brownlow suddenly announced his retirement effective immediately. He cited growing business interests and a subsequent inability to train, but it is curious that the popular captain of the reigning premiers would choose to step aside mid-season simply citing time constraints. This is especially the case given that Brownlow doubled down on some of his other sporting commitments, such as remaining on several committees of the Corio Bay Rowing Club, which also elected him as its captain just a month after he relinquished the football club’s captaincy. Brownlow also served on the Barwon Regatta sub-committee, was a member of the Geelong Volunteer Fire Brigade, and even took up fox terrier coursing, racing a dog named ‘Tarantula’.
Brownlow clearly had options and could have given up other sporting activities to free up time to continue his playing career with Geelong in the VFA while entering his prime footballing years. That he chose otherwise suggests two things: he genuinely enjoyed being actively involved in diverse sporting interests; and, moreover, even at a comparatively young age Brownlow was drawn to off-field administration more than on-field action.
In fact, Brownlow’s mid-season retirement in 1884 coincidentally was the same season he joined the club’s general committee, marking his entry into football officialdom. One of his first tasks was serving on the sub-committee charged with overseeing the amalgamation of the town’s two leading sporting entities—the Corio Cricket Club and the Geelong Football Club—into the Geelong Cricket and Football Club (it remained this way until the 1950s when the partnership was officially dissolved). Four years later, Brownlow would assume the role of club secretary in 1888, for all intents and purposes his era’s equivalent to a modern AFL club’s CEO.
The industrious Brownlow combined the salaried GC&FC secretaryship with running his own businesses. He had married and started a family, too. Despite his many other commitments coupled with his ‘retirement’ years earlier, Brownlow somehow managed to find the time and energy to occasionally pull on the boots whenever Geelong needed reinforcements. His final appearance in the VFA was in September 1890—a gutsy hard-fought victory against Footscray at the Western Oval, which was a veritable quagmire owing to the atrocious conditions. Early records are imprecise, but Brownlow made around 70 appearances against senior VFA opposition and regularly featured among the best players. His overall playing career with Geelong is far more extensive when contests against local teams and country clubs, intercolonial representative matches, and assorted charitable or exhibition games are included.
Local sports administrator par excellence
Brownlow’s involvement in sports administration across the Geelong region is far too extensive to document so a few examples must suffice. He spent years as a committeeman or elected official at several cricket clubs and also served as the inaugural secretary of the town’s first turf wicket competition when the Geelong Cricket Association was established in 1896-97. Similarly, Brownlow was connected to numerous junior football clubs in Geelong and served as chairman of the region’s Church Union Football Association. There were his decades of service to rowing via multiple roles. His officialdom also enveloped swimming and athletics. Brownlow’s enthusiasm for sports even stretched to America’s favourite pastime when he was the driving force behind establishing a local baseball club, serving as its treasurer and secretary as well as playing—in a uniform he naturally ensured was those familiar Geelong colours of blue and white.
The entrepreneurial Brownlow often devised ways to simultaneously promote sports while boosting his own business interests. In the VFA’s halcyon days of the 1880s, for instance, he created extra foot traffic by producing free matchday ‘football scorecards’ and season ‘fixture cards’ that could be obtained only from his store. When Brownlow entered into partnership with the club’s former secretary William Caldwell to open a new sports depot during the 1890s, he drummed up extra business by running quoits tournaments on the premises after hours. As the Geelong agent for Acme Cycles he arranged bike races.
As club secretary it was Brownlow’s responsibility to liaise with Victorian Railways to schedule special trains whenever Geelong played away games in Melbourne. The clubrooms out at Corio Oval sat empty midweek, so supporters were advised that they could purchase train tickets for upcoming matches by visiting Brownlow’s store. This money-spinner was soon expanded by Brownlow offering package deals: fellow Pivotonians could combine a football game in Melbourne with reserved seats to watch a theatre show afterwards, with the option of skipping the train and returning home across the bay via the SS Excelsior. Brownlow also arranged for a special train on 9 May 1901, so that Geelong residents could witness the opening of federal parliament (at Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building).
Brownlow organised all kinds of charitable events involving special football matches. After the Bulli disaster claimed the lives of 81 men and boys from a gas explosion at a colliery between Sydney and Wollongong, ‘Brownie’ captained one of the teams for a fundraiser played in fancy dress. When two men were killed while trying to unblock a jammed six-inch breechloading Armstrong gun at Fort Queenscliff in 1891, Brownlow arranged for Geelong Football Club to play against the Queenscliff Garrison Artillery to raise funds for the victims’ families. Similarly, he helped coordinate the fundraising for a widow whose husband was killed by a blow from a cricket ball. Brownlow also led the fundraising efforts when the brother of future Geelong champions Bill and Alec Eason died while playing in a junior football game in 1899.
Besides the football-related endeavours, there were countless other cases over the decades where Brownlow supported charitable causes involving local orphanages, churches, and the Geelong Infirmary and Benevolent Asylum (the town’s original hospital). Brownlow also joined forces with lifelong best friend Jim D’Helin (who gave the Geelong Football Club tremendous service for over a half-century including 34 years as treasurer) to help guide the region’s unemployed relief committee.
As GC&FC secretary Brownlow arranged numerous trips for Geelong footballers to promote the game throughout country Victoria plus Tasmania, Adelaide, and Sydney. On the cricketing side, he organised for the England XI to play an exhibition game at Corio Oval during its Ashes Tour of 1911-12, and again in 1920-21.
No rest during WWI recess
Geelong spent time in recess during the Great War, sitting out the 1916 VFL season. As club secretary Brownlow nonetheless worked as tirelessly as ever to support the war effort. He organised a local Sportsman’s Carnival in aid of the Red Cross and Wounded Soldiers’ Fund. He led charity events for churches and orphanages, and arranged special football matches raising funds for causes such as the YMCA to provide comforts in military camps at home and abroad. Brownlow even coordinated a fundraising campaign that collected approximately £1,000 for the French Red Cross Society.
It was also during WWI that Brownlow teamed up with two other club heavyweights, president Arthur Bowman and Clive Myers, to lead the campaign and raise £30,000 for Geelong to build a new hospital (originally called the Geelong and District Kitchener Memorial Hospital and today officially named University Hospital Geelong). It is an excellent and enduring example of how the football club historically has played such a central role in the Geelong community’s broader development.
One of Brownlow’s most admired traits was his empathy and in particular he was revered for the personal relationships he fostered with players over the decades. This came to the fore during WWI as Brownlow maintained regular correspondence with some Geelong footballers away at the front including Leo Healy and Joe Slater. After Healy informed him in December 1915 that men at Gallipoli were in need of woollen scarves and gloves, Brownlow used the Geelong Advertiser to call for townsfolk to send in knitted supplies so he could dispatch a parcel to their heroes. Similarly, he sent Slater a package of supplies including football books that could be handed around in the trenches.
Leo Healy survived the war and upon returning home resumed playing for Geelong in 1919-20. Brownlow maintained correspondence with his dear mate Joe Slater—a remarkable sportsman who played representative cricket against the touring England XI and was named as a defender in Geelong’s official Team of the Century—until receiving the tragic news that he had been killed in action on the Western Front in May 1917.
Final years and striking the medal
Following the war, Brownlow started to scale back his charity work albeit not entirely. Meanwhile, he remained fully committed to sports administration, especially as Geelong secretary, acting president of the VFL, and AFC president.
In August 1923, however, it was reported that Brownlow was seriously ill. He was suffering from chronic nephritis (kidney disease). Typically, he carried on determinately and only relinquished his secretaryship in January 1924, some 36 years after assuming the role. Brownlow died a week later, aged 62, at his family home in Sydney Avenue, Geelong.
Charles Brownlow was such a popular and widely respected figure that his funeral was one of the largest ever seen in Geelong. Friends and colleagues travelled from far and wide to pay their respects, with around 30 pallbearers representing the Geelong Cricket and Football Club, the VFL, the VFL Umpires Association, rival VFL clubs, interstate football leagues, and the Victorian Cricket Association. The following month, one of Brownlow’s great contemporaries, Collingwood’s longstanding secretary and delegate Ern ‘Bud’ Copeland, proposed at a League meeting:
To perpetuate the memory of the late Charles Brownlow [for] his many years of most valuable service to the Australian game both as a player, Club Secretary, Delegate and Vice President of the League, and President of the Australasian Football Council, a gold and enamel medal of the value of £10 shall be presented annually by the League to the best and fairest player in premiership matches each season, the medal to be called the Brownlow Medal.
Copeland’s motion was carried unanimously, with the League’s best-and-fairest award viewed by Brownlow’s peers as an appropriate way to ‘perpetuate the memory’ of a man who had left such an indelible impression on the game. A hundred-odd years later, when wondering who might ‘take home Charlie’ this season, spend a moment reflecting on the extraordinary life of this Geelong icon whose name is synonymous with the game’s most prestigious individual award.
For free access to a detailed biographical account of Brownlow’s life, click this link to Bob Gartland and Tony Joel (2026), ‘The Man Behind the Medal: The Life of Charles Brownlow, 1861-1924’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 1-22: https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2026.2638326
Bob Gartland OAM is an Adjunct Professor and Advisory Board member of the Centre for Contemporary Histories at Deakin University, Australia. He is a life member and former vice-president of the Geelong Football Club. In 2022, Bob was awarded the R.J. Hickey Award for ‘outstanding service to Australian football’. He spent a decade working on the creation of the Geelong Sports Museum, which opened in GMHBA Stadium at Kardinia Park in 2024. Bob was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia ‘for service to the community of Geelong’.
Tony Joel is Associate Professor in History at Deakin University, Australia, where he has taught sports history for two decades. He is a co-founder of Deakin’s Centre for Contemporary Histories. Tony has won multiple awards for teaching excellence, including an Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) national Award for Teaching Excellence in 2016. His most recent book, entitled Line & Length: A History of the Geelong Cricket Club, co-authored with Mathew Turner, won the Australasian Society for Sports History (ASSH) 2025 Book Award.
