Josh Kennedy and Lance Franklin have combined to give the Sydney Swans two players in the top five in the Brownlow Medal for the fourth year in a row.

Kennedy polled 23 votes to finish 3^rd on the leaderboard behind record-breaking winner Dustin Martin (36), and ex-Swan Tom Mitchell (25) in the medal count in Melbourne on Monday night.

Franklin finished one vote further back on 22 to place 4^th ahead of Josh Kelly (21), Rory Sloane (20), Marcus Bontempelli (19), Ollie Wines (18) and Dayne Beams (17.

Luke Parker was next best of the Swans with 16 to have the 2016 runner-up finish 10^th overall.

Geelong’s Patrick Dangerfield polled 33 votes but was ineligible.

Kennedy polled 10 times, while Franklin and Parker polled nine times each.

Sydney were the only club with more than one player in the top 11 vote-getters. And they had three as they polled 88 votes in total to top the team vote count with minor premiers Adelaide despite starting the season with six losses which produced only eight votes.

Other Sydney players to win votes were Dan Hanneberry (6), Isaac Heeney (4), Sam Reid (3), Gary Rohan (3), Callum Sinclair (3), Heath Grundy (2), Zak Jones (2), Jake Lloyd (2) and Dane Rampe (2).

Kennedy, a surprise omission from the 2017 All-Australian side, now has 116 votes in the last six years from remarkably consistent hauls of 19-14-21-25-14-23.

He is equal second in this period, level with Martin, who has gone 5-16-13-21-25-36, and behind Dangerfield, who last night became the first player to post 30 votes two year in a row as he stretched his recent six-year run to 23-22-21-22-35-33 for a total of 156.

The only other players to top 100 votes in the last six years are Nat Fyfe (107) and Joel Selwood (106). Gary Ablett Jnr and Sam Mitchell have 99 in this period, and Trent Cotchin 97. Franklin has 86.

The Kennedy-Franklin double-act followed similarly dominant performances from Swans players in the last three years, with Parker and Hanneberry 2^nd and equal 5^th last year, Kennedy and Hanneberry 4^th and 5^th in 2015, and Franklin and Kennedy equal 3^rd and equal 5^th in 2014.

Prior to 2014 the Swans had gone 53 years without two players in the top five.

It happened in 1961, when Frank Johnson and Jim Taylor finished equal 4^th and equal 5^th, in 1959, when Skilton was 3^rd and Bill Gunn 5^th, and in 1955, when Fred Goldsmith won the medal and Eddie Lane was equal 4^th.

In a count in which Martin jumped ahead of the ineligible Dangerfield with three votes in Round 23 to better Dangerfield’s previous all-time vote record of 35 and Ablett skipped clear of the retiring Mitchell to head the all-time adjusted vote list there were a stack of significant moments for the Swans.

• Kennedy posted his third 20-vote season after 21 in 2014 and 25 in 2015, when he also led the club count, and crashed through the 100-vote barrier. He took his club and career total to 119, leap-frogging Paul Kelly (103), Hanneberry (109) and Herbie Matthews (117) to fourth spot on the club’s all-time vote list behind Bob Skilton (180), Adam Goodes (163) and Ron Clegg (121).

• Franklin posted his fourth 20-vote season after 20 for Hawthorn in 2008 and 2011, and 22 for the Swans in 2014. He topped the 50-vote mark for the Swans, reaching 69, and took his career total to 151. After retiring St.Kilda champion Nick Riewoldt became the 28^th player to top 150 career votes in Round 3 Franklin became the 29^th as West Coast’s Luke Priddis finished his career on 149.

• Heeney, Rohan, Sinclair, Jones and Lloyd all polled their first career votes.

• Grundy, Reid and Rampe had career-best medal counts. Grundy had gone into the 2017 season with three votes in 213 games, having polled one in 2006 and two in 2010. He polled twice in the same season for the first time. Reid had started the season with four votes from 98 games - two votes in 2012 and two singles in 2015. And Rampe, with two votes from 98 games to the end of last season after one two-vote rating in 2016, also polled twice in the same season for the first time.

• Nick Smith, second on the League’s all-time list of most games without a vote going into the count, held that position when he and leader Tom Lonergan went without a vote. Lonergan, from Geelong, has retired after 209 games, meaning Smith, now 191 games into his career, could go beyond that mark next season.

• Swans players were judged best afield 14 times – Franklin (5), Kennedy (4), Parker (2), Heeney (1), Rohan (1), Sinclair (1). Franklin’s three-vote rating in Round 1 was the only time a Swans player was judged best afield in a loss, while the only Swans win in which they did not get the three-vote rating was the last-gasp win over Essendon in Round 14, when the umpires voted for Michael Hurley.