We will put a set in front of you that covers every tier, and dated timings worked back from your presentation night.
Award ideas
Every award worth
handing out
Best and fairest picks itself. The rest of the night is the problem: which categories to run, what to call them, and how to recognise the people who never top a stat sheet. Twenty-four categories below, each with what it is really for.
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Seniors, juniors, volunteers
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Free engraving
Choose your group
Twenty-four categories that earn their place
Take the name as it is or change it to suit your club. What matters is that each one recognises something different β two awards for the same thing is how a night gets long.
Season 2026
Best & Fairest
The votes, across the season
Runner-up
Best & Fairest Runner-Up
Second on votes, named properly
Season 2026
Club Champion
Best and fairest plus attendance and service
Leading Goalkicker
Golden Boot
rgb(26 23 16 / 86%)
Playersβ Player
Voted By The Team
The award players care most about
Most Consistent
Every Week, Same Standard
Rewards reliability over highlights
Best First-Year Player
Rookie Of The Year
First season at the club, not first ever
Finals Series
Best On Ground β Grand Final
One match, remembered for years
Under 12s
Most Improved
Where they finished against where they started
Under 14s
Coachβs Award
The one the coach gets to decide alone
Junior Best & Fairest
Age Group Champion
The graded award, per age group
Every Player
Season Participation
The bulk of the order, and the point of the night
Best Team Player
Plays For The Jumper
Passes first, chases back, never complains
Encouragement Award
Kept Turning Up
For the season that was hard and finished anyway
Season 2026
Most Improved Player
The biggest gap between round one and the last
Best Clubperson
In And Out Of The Jumper
Recognises behaviour, not output
Unsung Hero
The One Nobody Nominated
Deliberately for someone off the stat sheet
Comeback Of The Year
Back From Injury
A season that was mostly rehab
Spirit Of The Club
How We Play
For living the thing the club says it stands for
Sportsmanship Award
Fair, Every Week
The award that quietly sets the standard
Volunteer Of The Year
The Night Would Not Happen
Canteen, timekeeping, transport, washing
Coachβs Recognition
Thank You, Coach
From the players, not the committee
Life Membership
Awarded 2026
The one that goes on the honour board
Service Award
10 Years With The Club
Milestone service, in five or ten year steps
Season 2026
Best & Fairest
The votes, across the season
Runner-up
Best & Fairest Runner-Up
Second on votes, named properly
Season 2026
Club Champion
Best and fairest plus attendance and service
Coaches Award
Golden Boot
The one stat nobody argues about
Playersβ Player
Voted By The Team
The award players care most about
Most Consistent
Every Week, Same Standard
Rewards reliability over highlights
Best First-Year Player
Rookie Of The Year
First season at the club, not first ever
Finals Series
Best On Ground β Grand Final
One match, remembered for years
Under 12s
Most Improved
Where they finished against where they started
Under 14s
Coachβs Award
The one the coach gets to decide alone
Junior Best & Fairest
Age Group Champion
The graded award, per age group
Every Player
Season Participation
The bulk of the order, and the point of the night
Best Team Player
Plays For The Jumper
Passes first, chases back, never complains
Encouragement Award
Kept Turning Up
For the season that was hard and finished anyway
Season 2026
Most Improved Player
The biggest gap between round one and the last
Best Clubperson
In And Out Of The Jumper
Recognises behaviour, not output
Unsung Hero
The One Nobody Nominated
Deliberately for someone off the stat sheet
Comeback Of The Year
Back From Injury
A season that was mostly rehab
Spirit Of The Club
How We Play
For living the thing the club says it stands for
Sportsmanship Award
Fair, Every Week
The award that quietly sets the standard
Volunteer Of The Year
The Night Would Not Happen
Canteen, timekeeping, transport, washing
Coachβs Recognition
Thank You, Coach
From the players, not the committee
Life Membership
Awarded 2026
The one that goes on the honour board
Service Award
10 Years With The Club
Milestone service, in five or ten year steps
Most clubs run six to ten categories per grade. Past that the night stretches and each award means a little less.
Laid out in running order before the room fills. Everything above ends up on this table.
Building the night
Three tiers, not twenty-four awards
01
Every player, first
The bulk of any club order is a trophy for everyone on the list. It is what the parents came for and what most clubs under-order.
02
The graded awards, per team
Best and fairest, most improved, coachβs award. Three per grade is plenty; six is a long night.
03
The club awards, once
Club champion, volunteer of the year, life membership. These close the night and deserve a bigger piece than everything before them.
The length problem
Ninety seconds per award is the realistic figure once you include the walk, the handshake and the photograph. Forty awards is an hour before anyone has spoken. PRESENTATION NIGHT PLANNING
What to call them
A name people repeat lasts longer
01
Name it after someone
The Ryan Shield, the Marion Cup. A category named for a person the club remembers outlives every committee that follows.
02
Say what it is for
βKept turning upβ tells a fourteen-year-old exactly what they did. βEncouragement awardβ tells them nothing.
03
Keep it the same every year
Renaming a category resets its history. If it is going on a perpetual trophy, the name is a thirty-year decision.
If it is going on a perpetual award
We keep your artwork and winner history on file, so a category named this year still matches in 2040.
PERPETUAL TROPHY RECORDS
How many awards
What a typical club orders
A rough shape to check your own numbers against, before the quantity break decides it for you.
Awards by club size
Club size
Player awards
Graded awards
Club awards
Total
One senior team
25β30
3β4
2β3
around 35
Seniors plus reserves
50β60
6β8
3β4
around 70
Junior club, six teams
90β110
12β18
3β5
around 125
Full club, juniors and seniors
150β200
20β30
5β6
Quantity pricing applies at 25+ (6% off), 50+ (12%) and 100+ (24%) β on the total order, not per style, so mixing sizes and categories costs nothing extra.
Good to know
Category questions
How many awards is too many?
Once the awards themselves run past about an hour, the room stops listening and the last award β usually the biggest one β lands flat. Six to ten categories per grade, ninety seconds each, is the usable ceiling.
Should juniors get the same categories as seniors?
Some of them. Best and fairest and most improved translate; playersβ player and leading goalkicker often do not, because they reward things junior sport is deliberately not measuring.
Can we invent our own category?
Yes, and the best ones are always club-specific. Name it for what it recognises or for someone the club remembers, then keep the name unchanged so the history builds.
What about the volunteers?
A club award for volunteers is the single most under-used category on this page. The people who ran the canteen all season are usually the reason the night exists.
Do we need a different trophy for each category?
No. One series at two or three heights carries the whole night β the height shows the tier and the plate carries the category. Trophy size guide
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Where people go from here
Australian trophy makers since 1984