So Nick Daicos has won a Brownlow, after just five seasons in the game and at the ripe old age of 23.

Yet it somehow feels like we should add the word ‘finally’ into that sentence – because this honour is overdue. Indeed, there is a world not too far removed from the real one we’re inhabiting in which this could have been Nick’s third or even fourth Brownlow.

In 2023 he was injured in the Round 21 clash with Hawthorn, effectively ruling him out of the last four rounds of voting, yet still finished in third place, just three votes behind the winner, Lachie Neale.

In 2024 he broke the record for the most votes in a season with 38 – only to have Patrick Cripps break it by more. In 2025 he recorded 32 votes, enough to have won in almost every other year, but still somehow found Matt Rowell seven votes ahead by the end of the count.

So Nick has been unlucky when it comes to Brownlows (and let’s be honest: he’s been dudded at least once). This year’s award, even being won by one so young, does indeed feel like justice at last being served. And that he did it with a record number of votes is even sweeter.

It also adds an exclamation point to what is arguably the finest first five years that we’ve ever seen in football. One Brownlow (could have been more), almost certainly two Copelands (and could have been three or four), one Premiership, two Players Association MVPs, two Coaches Association Champion Player Awards, countless media awards and four All-Australians. At this rate he won’t just rewrite the record books but obliterate them.

In terms of fast starts, the benchmark at Collingwood has always been Des Fothergill. And strange as it might sound there is a thread that links him to Nick.

Fothergill debuted at 16 in 1937, somehow managing to find his way into a Premiership team despite his tender years. By the age of 20, after four seasons, he had won three Copelands and the 1940 Brownlow. A freakishly talented half-forward and midfielder, he might well have become one of the all-time greats if he hadn’t gone to the VFA in 1941, and then to the Second World War.

One of football’s most loved researchers, the late Tom Wanliss, actually saw Fothergill play and rated him the best player he had ever seen in his 90+ years of watching the game (he was so smitten that he even named his cat ‘Fother’ after him). And when Tom saw Peter Daicos emerge in the 1980s, he was convinced that Daics was Fothergill’s modern incarnation. The similarities, he said, were uncanny.

Like so many Magpie fans of a certain age, Tom was mesmerised watching Peter play – and not just because he reminded him of his childhood hero. Indeed, Daicos Snr is arguably the most watchable and beloved Collingwood player of the past 50 years.

Nick is different. Equally watchable, but in a different way. And just as popular, if not moreso.

Peter’s mastery of the game was most evident around the goals. If you gave Collingwood supporters only one video they could watch on loop for the rest of their days, many would choose a Peter Daicos highlights video.

Even from today’s vantage point, the goals are extraordinary. Huge torps from outside 50, laser-like drop punts on the run with either his right or left foot (he’s up there with Steele Sidebottom as the most complete dual-sided player of recent times), snaps over his shoulder, ridiculous dribblers from the boundary line long before they became something that even lumbering ruckmen would practice.

Peter was the most perfectly balanced footballer – an absolute joy to watch. His evasive skills were second to none. He wasn’t especially fast but he was impossible to catch; he’d just swivel and baulk and glide away, often leaving multiple defenders in his wake.

As good as he was up forward, it’s easy to forget that he was also a seriously good midfielder too, his exquisite kicking skills making him as damaging a creator as he was a finisher.

But he returned to the forward line after a succession of injuries in the mid-‘80s, and by 1990 it all came together in one of the most remarkable individual seasons any Collingwood forward has produced. The 97 goals he kicked that year not only propelled the Pies to that famous drought-breaking Premiership, they also cemented his standing as the idol of his generation. It was here that the legend of Peter Daicos was truly born.

By the time he retired – a little reluctantly – a few years later, he was the King of Collingwood. And the fans never stopped loving him.

So there was great interest when his oldest son Josh made his way to the Club in 2017. It actually was a surprisingly low-key arrival: it had needed only a pick in the 50s to secure Josh, and expectations were accordingly modest (one of Gavin Brown’s boys, Callum, arrived the same year with greater hopes).

But as Josh worked and developed, the quality of the bloodlines shone through. Today, there is actually more of Peter in Josh’s game than there is in Nick’s. Josh has the same balance and class, the same body swerve, and lovely skills on both sides of his body. Winning the Copeland in a Premiership year was the ultimate testament to his development – and if Nick missing the last four games of 2023 cost him that Copeland, then at least it stayed in the family.

Even as Josh progressed, however, word kept coming through about his younger brother Nick, who was ripping it up in junior football. Peter had made his way through the under-19s and reserves without too much fanfare, Josh from a low draft pick. But everyone could see from a long way out that there was going to be a special ‘buzz’ around Nick.

There was something similar when Darcy Moore came through as a Top 10 draft pick in 2014 (it really does make a difference when it’s a son of a famous father). The same happened with Phil Carman when he came from Norwood in 1975 – headlines, buzz, expectation, excitement.

‘Fabulous Phil’ delivered but really only for a year, and Darcy has ended up as Josh and Nick’s captain. But it doesn’t always work out: plenty of other recruits and draftees have been hyped before arrival and never quite lived up to the billing.

Not Nick Daicos. He has been everything we were promised – and more.

From the very earliest viewings there were some things that were immediately apparent. The first is that he is quick – seriously quick (he definitely has both his father and brother covered in this regard). He loves a bounce, and uses his speed not only to break clear of congestion but also to change angles, break lines and open up play. He takes the game on at every opportunity, and his speed is a big part of that.

He’s also an unbelievably hard worker. Watch him during a game and you’ll be staggered by the amount of gut-busting running he does, much of it at high speed. He runs and runs and runs, from contest to contest to contest. No wonder he’s completely spent by the time the game is done. And as his coach loves to point out, he works just as hard on the track too.

His skills, almost inevitably, are elite. He’s a precise, measured kick of the ball, able to pull off the most improbable inch-perfect passes. Sometimes he bites off a little more than he can chew, but why not – when those passes work they are game-changers. He’s very good on his left foot, but has mastered the art of kicking with the outside of his right as well. He’s also capable of giving the ball a decent roost from 50+, and is usually good around goals. Midfielders of his quality who can kick 26 goals in a season are hard to find.

His ball-handling is pure and clean in all conditions, as you would expect of someone with his surname. To watch Nick play in the wet is to see what separates the greatest from the very good. And his awareness and reading of the game are unsurpassed: he seems to know where the ball is going before others do, and he sees options with his teammates that nobody else could pick out. His footy IQ is simply off the charts.

So he gets to more contests than most, sees what’s happening before others do so goes to the right spots and doesn’t fumble when he finds the ball. Then he has the vision to spot up an option nobody else has seen and the skills and confidence to execute it perfectly. Mission completed. Sprint to the next contest and go again.

No wonder he wins a ton of the footy, and is super-damaging with it.

Gary Ablett Jnr, a pretty handy player himself not that long ago, said on radio recently that he enjoyed watching Nick more than any other player currently running around in the AFL. That’s high praise, from one ‘Little Master’ to another. In particular, Ablett said he loved watching the way Nick used the ball – expertly assessing space and opportunities in the blink of an eye, then somehow pulling off a seemingly impossible kick.

Nick is also tough. This is one of his most under-appreciated qualities, but he has it in spades, both physically and mentally. Look at what he went through in 2023 to make it back from the knee injury that threatened to end his season. Look at the amount of contested footy he wins. Then look at the punishment and brutal hits he absorbs every week, and what he has to put up with from the taggers. He’s taken some crunching blows, but just gets up, shakes himself off and gets on with it. Sprint to the next contest and go again.

This year, with Darcy Moore and Brayden Maynard both out for long periods, he’s also stepped up into a leadership role, captaining the team 14 times. The Club mic’d him up during the important game against West Coast late in the season and it made for compelling viewing (and listening). Here was Nick not only running and kicking and tackling, but encouraging his teammates, lifting them, urging them. Running not just to a contest but to a young teammate to tell them they’d just done something bloody brilliant. It was spine-tingling.

And that’s another thing about Nick: for all the individual brilliance, he is all about the team. He is absolutely driven to be the best he can be, and to succeed. But he’s even more inspired by the desire for team success, and to win more flags. And you just know he’ll do everything in his power to make that happen.

Off the field he is a dream: polite, well-spoken, and always with plenty of time for both the media and the fans, especially the kids. Even one of Tex Walker’s boys adores him. He is the most popular player in football – with both adult fans and their offspring – but that doesn’t seem to weigh on him at all.

He really is the complete package, and despite all he has achieved already, the future looks like it could be even brighter.

So what comes next for Nick Daicos? How can you possibly improve on what he’s delivered thus far? More Brownlows? More Copelands? More of everything?

We can’t predict what he will achieve, but we do know how it will start: he’ll simply sprint to the next contest and go again.

Michael produced this article for the AFL Record's special Brownlow edition, which can be purchased here.