Luke Blackwell has capped a magnificent six-year career with Claremont by winning the E. B. Cook Medal as the club’s fairest-and-best league player in the 2014 season.

The champion centreman retires at the tender age of 27 as one of the all-time greats in the 89-year history of the Claremont club.

He now has won the fairest-and-best award four times to equal the feat of club legends Denis Marshall and Graham Moss.

Blackwell received 370 votes to win the 2014 award from dynamic half-forward/midfielder Ryan Neates (336), ruckman Mark Seaby (315), full-back Brandon Franz (308) and midfielder/forward Andrew Foster (296).

He also won the E. B. Cook Medal in 2009, 2010 and 2011. He finished third behind Kane Mitchell and Tom Lee in 2012 when he missed three matches and was 20th in 2013 when a serious ankle injury kept him on the sidelines for three months.

Marshall, a superb athlete who excelled at half-back and in the centre, was Claremont’s fairest-and-best player in 1959, 1961, 1963 and 1970, and Moss, a champion ruckman and the 1976 Brownlow medallist when playing for Essendon, won the Claremont award in 1977, 1978, 1979 and 1980.

Blackwell is the elder son of Wayne Blackwell, Claremont’s vice-captain and centreman in the club’s 1981 premiership side. Wayne Blackwell was runner-up in the league side’s fairest-and-best award in 1982 and 1983 and made 112 league appearances for the Tigers before he joined Carlton in 1984 and played 110 matches for the Blues.

After making 23 AFL appearances for Carlton as a 19 and 20-year-old Luke Blackwell joined Claremont in 2009 (after suffering a serious injury to his right quadriceps muscle in 2008) and since his debut in the round one match against Subiaco at Leederville Oval on March 20, 2009, he has thrilled football fans with his tremendous skill and precise disposal by hand and foot.

His insatiable appetite for hard work and unselfish attitude has made him an inspiring leader at Claremont over the past six years. His unerring foot-passing, great proficiency with handball on both sides of his body, his nous at knowing where to go to get the football, his ability to think quickly under pressure and to invariably select the right option have been the hallmarks of a wonderful career.

Always hard in and under, Blackwell has suffered many injuries from the constant buffeting from opponents. His professionalism and devotion to training at a high standard have enabled him to miss very few matches. He has been a great role model to the young aspiring Claremont footballers.

The wear and tear on his body played a major part in his decision to hang up his boots, along with his dedicated teammates Trinity Handley, Matt Orzel and Andrew Foster, after the Tigers ended the 2014 season on a high by defeating league leaders East Perth at Leederville Oval. Blackwell, who played in 114 league matches for Claremont, plans to settle in Victoria with his fiancé Kimberley Alexander. 

Apart from his four Cook Medals, Blackwell won the Sandover Medal in 2011 when he polled 42 votes and finished nine ahead of Subiaco midfielder Kyal Horsley. Blackwell finished third behind Perth’s Ross Young in the 2009 Sandover Medal and was second to Swan Districts rover Andrew Krakouer in 2010.

In 2012 Blackwell polled 33 votes and finished in seventh position in the medal. After being injured for more than half the season in 2013 he received 22 votes and was 13th behind East Fremantle’s Rory O’Brien.

And then this year Blackwell polled 46 votes to finish second in the Sandover Medal, just one vote behind West Perth’s Aaron Black. Blackwell was awarded the Simpson Medal as Western Australia’s best player against Victoria in 2010 and a year later he headed the voting with East Perth’s Josh Smith for the Simpson Medal in the match against Queensland. But Smith was awarded the medal, with the umpires casting the deciding vote.

Blackwell was a member of Claremont’s 2011 and 2012 league premiership sides and the honour of being captain in the 2012 grand final victory over East Fremantle.

A debilitating hernia problem caused Blackwell to miss a match against Peel Thunder at Rushton Park late in the season and he polled heavily in all the 19 matches in which he appeared. Votes were cast on a 5-4-3-2-1-0 basis by five members of the match committee in every game. His final tally of 370 gave him a comfortable victory over Neates and Seaby, two of the only three to appear in all of Claremont’s 20 matches, the other being Tom Taylor.

Neates, Seaby, Franz and Foster all had an outstanding season, with the first three looking forward keenly to helping the Tigers to move from their fifth placing this year up into the top four.

Twenty-five-year-old Dean Blackwell made it a family affair when he won the Denis Marshall trophy as the fairest-and-best player in the reserves side. Luke’s younger brother, in his first season at Claremont after winning the fairest-and-best award with amateur club Maddington in the two previous years, was a tower of strength at centre-half-back and he polled 302 votes to finish ahead of 19-year-old full-back Timm House (266) and winger Henry Roberts (265).

The Tom Richardson trophy for the fairest-and-best player in the colts was won by half-back flanker Harry McCracken (336 votes) from centre-half-back Matt Cairns (324) and midfielder Sam Humphry (323).

FINAL STANDINGS:

League: 370 Luke Blackwell, 336 Ryan Neates, 315 Mark Seaby, 308 Brandon Franz, 296 Andrew Foster, 278 Corey Yeo, 271 Jordan McAllister, 264 Matt Davies, 252 Tom Taylor, 250 Jack Bradshaw.

Reserves: 302 Dean Blackwell, 266 Timm House, 265 Henry Roberts, 230 Jack McPhee, 227 Ben Taylor, 221 Sam Lamont, 218 Keegan Knott, 215 Josh Tilley, 211 Keifer Yu, 203 Ethan Panizza.

Colts: 336 Harry McCracken, 324 Matt Cairns, 323 Sam Humphry, 317 Isaac Baum, 273 Bailey Rogers, 266 Jack Prendiville, 256 Harry Taylor, 256 Alec Waterman, 245 Jacob Delaporte, 244 Adam Volaric.