It was a monster year for Australian sport in 1968.

At the Olympic Games in Mexico City, Michael Wenden won the 100m and 200m freestyle double and Lyn McClements won the 100m butterfly in the pool. On the track, Ralph Doubell won the 800m in equal world record time, and Maureen Caird the 80m hurdles.

Boxing legend Lionel Rose beat Japan’s Fighting Harada to become world bantamweight champion, Rain Lover won the first of two consecutive Melbourne Cups, and in the first Open Wimbledon, Rod Laver beat Tony Roche in an All-Australian men’s final, while Laver and Roche beat Ken Rosewall and Fred Stolle in an All-Australian men’s doubles final, and Australians Ken Fletcher and Margaret Court won the mixed doubles.

But ask anyone connected with the South Melbourne/Sydney Swans and they’ll tell you all this was secondary. The major sporting event in Australia in 1968 was Bob Skilton’s third Brownlow Medal – perhaps just ahead of Skilton’s ninth Swans Club Champion Award.

Skilton, the then 29-year-old Swans rover in his 13^th season, added the 1968 Brownlow to previous wins in 1959 and 1963 to join Fitzroy’s Haydn Bunton (1931, ‘32, ‘35) and Essendon’s Dick Reynolds (1934, ’37, ‘38) as a triple winner of the game’s highest individual honour.

He polled a personal best 24 votes from 17 games to win by three votes from Geelong’s Denis Marshall (21), with Fitzroy’s Kevin Murray (18) third and Carlton’s John Nicholls (17) tied for fourth with St Kilda’s Carl Ditterich (17).

In 1963, Skilton had polled 20 votes in 17 games to win by three votes from Geelong’s Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer (17) and St Kilda’s Darrel Baldock (17), with Geelong’s John Henderson (15) fourth.

And in 1959, Skilton polled 20 votes in 16 games to share the medal with St Kilda’s Verdun Howell, who polled 20 votes in 17 games. Originally Skilton was awarded the medal on countback, but there was a four-way tie for third between Collingwood’s Ray Gabelich and Bill Serong, Essendon’s Hugh Mitchell and Footscray’s Ted Whitten, all on 14 votes.

Skilton’s 1968 Club Champion followed earlier wins in 1958, ‘59, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’64, ‘65 and ‘67, while his Brownlow hat-trick came on top of South’s earlier Brownlow wins via Herbie Matthews (1940), Ron Clegg (1949) and Fred Goldsmith (1955).

At the time Skilton was the first player in League history to win nine Club Champion Awards.

Kevin Murray joined him in 1969 with his ninth Fitzroy best and fairest and his only Brownlow, but 50 years later, now 79 and Bob Skilton OAM, the Swans legend remains in a class of his own.

He is member No. 3 of an exclusive Triple Brownlow Club, which welcomed member No. 4 when Ian Stewart won the Brownlow with St Kilda in 1965, 1966 and Richmond in 1971.

Skilton will attend Monday night’s count on the 50^th anniversary of his third medal win.

In the unlikely event that all living medallists were in attendance, the Swans Team of the Century captain and AFL Team of the Century’s first rover, who will celebrate his 80^th birthday on 8 November, would be the seventh oldest.

This follows the death last month of the Bulldogs’ 1956 winner Peter Box, aged 86.

It leaves three St Kilda winners as the senior statesmen of the Brownlow Club – 1958 winner Neil Roberts (85), 1957 winner Brian Gleeson (83) and 1959 winner Verdun Howell (82).

North Melbourne’s 1965 winner Noel Teasdale and Kevin Murray would be 80, and the Dogs’ 1960 winner John Schultz would be four days short of his 80^th birthday.

It isn’t exactly 50 years since Skilton’s third Brownlow because in 1968 the medal festivities slotted into the first week of finals.

The votes were counted live on radio on 2 September, two days after the final round of home-and-away matches, and the medal was presented prior to the first semi-final at the MCG the following Saturday.

It wasn’t until 1978 that the Brownlow, now very much the AFL’s night of nights, was upgraded to fill the Monday night of grand final week.

There certainly wasn’t any of the red-carpet glitz and glamour that will be on show on Monday night when Skilton won any of his medals, but each had a story all of its own, as was detailed by Jim Main in the club’s official history “In the Blood”.

In 1959, a 20-year-old Skilton was one of the pre-count favourites but he was doing a plumbing apprenticeship at the time and when the vote-count started he was at night school.

When he arrived home after school he found cars parked up and down his street and asked, ‘what’s going on?” before being told, ‘you’ve won the Brownlow Medal’.

In 1963, he was determined to keep a low profile, and it took South Melbourne coach Noel McMahen to talk him into attending a club party at McMahen’s Aspindale home to listen to the count on radio.

“It was one of the best decisions I made as all my teammates were there,” Skilton reportedly said later. “And Bob Kingston (runner-up to Skilton in the Club Champion Award) kindly emptied his beer all over me after I won.”

In 1969, Skilton wasn’t the favourite again. The Sporting Globe tipped Richmond’s Kevin Bartlett to win, and rated Skilton a possible challenger alongside Ditterich, Hawthorn’s Peter Hudson and Carlton’s Sergio Silvagni.

Skilton had originally planned to attend a sports night in Pentridge Jail on the night of the count but instead was home in bed.

Two days later, on Wednesday 4 September, The Sporting Globe carried a front-page headline which labelled Skilton “MR. BROWNLOW” and told how he had not been able to attend work the day after his third medal win.

It was not because of any excess celebrations – instead he’d gone to hospital for surgery on a broken nose and fractured cheekbone suffered in a string of collisions in South’s last two games of the season.

An extended series of graphic photographs showing the extent of Skilton's injuries hung in the club rooms at the Lake Oval prior to the Swans’ move to Sydney.

Still, Skilton rated the 1968 medal the best of the three as he thanked wife Marion “for keeping me going through all the injuries”.

Skilton’s third Brownlow was South Melbourne’s sixth and at the time elevated the club to equal second on the all-time medal list with Fitzroy behind only St Kilda, who at the time had won seven.

Today the Swans sit proudly well clear at the top of the medal list with 14 after further wins by Peter Bedford (1970), Graham Teasdale (1977), Barry Round (1981), Greg Williams (1986), Gerard Healy (1988), Paul Kelly (1995) and Adam Goodes (2003 and 2006).

They lead the tally from St Kilda (10), Western Bulldogs (10), Collingwood (9), Fitzroy (8), Essendon (8), Geelong (7), Melbourne (7), Richmond (7), Carlton (5), Hawthorn (5), North Melbourne (5), Brisbane (3), West Coast (3), Adelaide (1), Fremantle (1) and Gold Coast (1). Port Adelaide and GWS are yet to have a player win the medal.

Skilton, 20 when he won his first medal and 29 at his third, is the youngest and second-oldest Swans winner. And, having played 63 game when he won in 1959 and 198 games when he won in 1968, is the fifth least experienced winner and the most experienced winner.

When Skilton retired at the end of 1971 his career tally of 180 Brownlow votes was a League record.

Kevin Murray played a further three years to 1974 and added 13 votes to pull within two at 178, but it wasn’t until 1981 that Gary Dempsey, Footscray and North Melbourne ruckman, passed the Swans champion.

Using adjusted career totals, whereby votes awarded under a two-umpire voting system in 1976-77 are halved for comparison purposes, Skilton still ranks 10^th on the all-time votes tally after Geelong’s Joel Selwood slipped one vote ahead of him last year.

Although Hawthorn legend Leigh Matthews officially is listed as having earned 202 Brownlow Medal votes, 57 came in 1976-77 so his adjusted tally of 173.5 is below Skilton.

Similarly, Dempsey received 246 actual votes but has an adjusted tally of 218.5.

Collingwood skipper Scot Pendlebury, with 165 votes, needs 16 this year to push Skilton out of the top 10.

Skilton’s career tally of 180 Brownlow votes from 237 games heads the Swans’ all-time list in which 25 players have topped 50.