Kyle Martin, former Collingwood midfielder, has won his 13th best and fairest award in 14 seasons

Kyle Martin won it.

He wins it every year.

It was the ninth time the former Collingwood midfielder has won Noble Park’s top award, the Peter Reece Medal, and it continues his dazzling record in vote counts.

Martin has now won the best and fairest in 13 of his past 14 seasons, a run that began at his school, Haileybury College, in 2008.

He took Noble Park’s senior award for the first time in 2009.

In 2010, he missed a lot of football with an arm injury.

Since then he’s taken the best and fairest every year he has played: with Noble Park in 2011, the Frankston VFL team in 2012, the Collingwood VFL team in 2013 and ‘14, and Noble in 2015, ’16, ’17, ’18, ’19, ’21 and now ’22 (the 2020 season was cancelled because of Covid).

Last Saturday, Martin captained the Bulls to the Eastern League premiership, picking up 42 possessions against Rowville (and presumably going close to receiving the medal for best-afield).

Tonight he received another honour: his club made him a life member.

“What do you say about him that hasn’t been said?’’ Noble Park coach Steve Hughes, who first coached Martin in the Under 13s (he won the best and fairest that year too), says of his skipper.

“You get asked about him all the time and you have to roll out the same stuff.

“What have I coached? Thirteen years now? He’s not only the best player, he’s the biggest competitor I’ve coached.

“He’s got every attribute. But I’ve always said Kyle’s biggest attribute, or his one-wood as they’re calling it these days, is his ability to know what’s going to happen next on the ground, no doubt about that.

“He’s at the next contest before anyone else is.

“I mean, he’s got work ethic, don’t get me wrong, but he’s so intuitive. That’s his big strength.’’

He says Martin is Noble Park’s best tackler, “which sometimes doesn’t get noted’’, and he led a defensive-efforts tally the Bulls updated after every match this season.

“He has incredibly high standards, he’s very demanding. I have a theory that the captain’s the boss. He’s a bit old-school and I think that’s great for our group,’’ Hughes says.

“Calls a spade a spade and will pull a teammate up no matter who they are. But he’s more than happy to cop his own criticism too.’’

Widely regarded as the best player in local football in Victoria, Martin played six AFL games for Collingwood after being drafted from Frankston.

He won the VFL best and fairest in both his years with the Maggies.

They offered him a rookie-list position for the 2015 season but he decided to return to Noble Park.

“I sort of decided if there wasn’t a primary-list spot, it would be tough to go on a rookie list for a third year,’’ he said when he went back to the Bulls.

“It was partly financial but there were a lot of mental things with it, just having security and, you know, being on the list and being ready and available to play … waiting for something to happen to you, waiting for the door to open. Sometimes that door might never open. It’s tough, mentally. It can get you down.’’

He added: “Grind is a pretty decent word to use for it. It was very tiring, a lot of hard work. Sometimes when you’re not getting the reward for your hard work you can go off the track a little bit, lose your way.

“In saying that it was also one of the best experiences of my life and I would never change it for anything.’’

In 2020, Martin told A Noble History author Daryl Pitman: “Some of the things I learnt at Collingwood were about the commitment and effort that you have to put in week in, week out to get your body right to be able to perform at the maximum level required to be a really good player – recovery, preparation, diet etc. I’ve tried to bring that knowledge back into local footy.’’

Martin missed four games with injury this season but polled 45 votes to Christopher Horton-Milne (40). Ace defender Ryan Morrison (37) was third, Jackson Sketcher (30) fourth and Lachie McDonnell (27) rounded out the top five.