Goulburn's Mitchell Cornish made a return to rugby league with the Young Cherrypickers in 2021, and his season has been capped off with the most prestigious award available in the Group 9 division: the Eric Weissel Medal.
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The Weissel Medal is awarded to the player adjudged Best and Fairest in the First Grade division, which Cornish won with 18 votes.
The Tumut Blues' Ron Leapai and Lachlan Bristow were in equal second on the vote tally, with 15 apiece.
Though he held a comfortable lead in the end, Cornish was surprised by his accolade, partly after he took some time to adjust to the Cherrypickers' structure early in the season.
"I thought personally that I had a slow start to the year," he said.
"I was just finding my feet with the new team and a new structure. I thought after the midway point of the season that I started to hit my straps and play some reasonable footy."
So focused on doing the job for his side, was Cornish, that he didn't even think he was a chance for the Weissel Medal.
"To be honest, I didn't think I was in the running for it," he said.
"There's a few handy players in that competition who were all having really good years, so even to be in that group of players was good.
"You spend a lot of time focusing on winning a grand final, so a lot of your thought process goes into that and [the Weissel Medal] is something that comes off the back of training hard and having a good year."
Cornish's reputation as a dominant force in the halves was well-established even before his return to the Goulburn Bulldogs in 2019. But in his last two seasons of league, the 28-year-old has won both the Les McIntyre Medal in the Canberra Region Rugby League First Grade competition, and now the Weissel Medal.
"It's not something you set out to do at the start of the year," Cornish said.
"The grand final's the main objective, but it's always very humbling and I'm very honoured to receive both of those awards in their respective competitions.
"It's a good personal tick that you went alright that year."
The Cherrypickers certainly benefited from Cornish's form, as they picked up 11 wins, one draw, and four losses in 2021, which secured them third place on the ladder by the time the season was forced to a premature end by the COVID-19 outbreaks in NSW.
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