A humble Easton Wood credited his maiden Charles Sutton medal win to his coaches and his teammates, at the Club’s best and fairest awards on Wednesday night.
Wood collected 268 votes, 39 votes ahead of Doug Hawkins medallist Bob Murphy, and admitted shock when realising he was in contention for the award mid-way through the count.
“After the second round of voting when I was at the top I thought, I don’t know what I’m doing up there, but I might go ok, I couldn’t believe it.
“I can’t believe it, overwhelmed is the word.
“I never imagined that this would be an honour that I would have the pleasure of… I’m speechless.”
Wood began the season with the simple goal of playing every game, after injury had heavily interrupted the first seven years of his career.
The defender says that maintaining his health was the first step in gaining confidence on-field.
“First of all the goal was to play a whole year, I’d never played a whole year before.
“I missed one game this year so I still haven’t been able to do it but I felt like after the first few rounds my confidence started to grow and that was in line with the team’s belief.
“So there’s so much I have to owe to the coaches and the players around me, I really rode the wave I felt in the end, you just have to step up in that environment.”
And step up he did.
Wood polled votes in every game he played in, to record the win against favoured teammates Bob Murphy, Marcus Bontempelli, Luke Dahlhaus and Matthew Boyd.
In a count that could have gone in any direction, Wood’s dominance in the award was even more outstanding.
The 26-year-old also took home the John Van Groningen Domestique Award, the player-voted award.
“I’ll cherish that for a long time, I said earlier that as I’ve been playing, that award’s been called a few different things over the time.
“It gets awarded the team player of the week every week, and I remember watching that for my first seven years with great envy.
“I don’t think I ever polled a vote in my first seven years or even got close and to be able to not just poll but to win it was huge, to have that recognition and your teammates’ respect and appreciating what you do is huge.”
