They're back! The awards that stop a nation, or at least kill a couple of minutes on the train, return as Australia's heroes and zeroes are honoured in style.

And what a year 2016 was. There was drought-breaking fairytales, athletes and teams rising to fame and fortune, unforgettable Olympic memories and a whole heap of stupid stuff to keep us entertained.

These awards celebrate all of that, the good and the bad of Australian sport. There are some new prizes to be handed out among a stack of returning ones from last year.

The red carpet has been rolled out, and our recipients are looking dazzling as they prepare to accept their medals. Congratulations one and all, and good luck in 2017.

Barry Hall Award for best punch

Dylan Walker (Previous winner: Mick Fanning)

We've all been there. You're tired, you're hungry, you're in your stuffy work clothes, and all you really want to do is get inside your cosy home and settle in for the evening.

Dylan Walker showed that door who was boss. It won't mess with him again. ( AAP: Paul Miller )

But some bloody prankster has put a giant slab of wood in the doorframe, stopping you from getting in. While you or I may investigate the round turny thing in the middle to see where that takes us, Manly's Dylan Walker had a slightly different idea.

He decked it. He looked that door up and down, fancied his chances and gave that hoodlum on hinges a right knuckle sandwich.

Naturally, Walker busted his hand up good and proper and had to miss a month of footy while he recovered. To add insult to injury, Manly also fined him $10,000 for being dumb.

But you think that's bad? You should have seen the door.

Ellyse Perry Award for most freakishly talented sportsperson

Ellyse Perry (Previous winner: Ellyse Perry)

She's done it! Ellyse Perry has incredibly gone back to back in the award that carries her name!

Ellyse Perry is better at cricket than you. ( AAP: Paul Miller )

It may look as if this was a foregone conclusion, but in truth Perry has needed to up her game again to keep the streak alive. You never know when another Ellyse Perry is going to pop out of the woodwork and usurp you.

Last year she won for spearheading an Aussie Ashes win on English soil, something which has seemed pretty much impossible for most Australian teams for a decade now. This year it took an unpreceded streak of excellence to make sure the medal hung around her neck.

Perry belted 17 half-centuries from 23 ODI innings, continuing a hot streak that begun in 2014. During the streak, she has averaged 89.53 and notched her career-best score of 95 not out.

While it is blatantly unfair that a human being can be born with so much talent, deep down we convince ourselves it's okay because she's Australian.

Jeff Fenech Award for best winner's speech

Bruno Fornaroli (Previous winner: Michelle Payne)

You could just about forgive someone for getting a little bit over-excited when winning the FFA Cup, such is the prestige and historical significance of the competition.

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But the magic of the cup got the better of Uruguayan striker and Melbourne City captain Bruno Fornaroli who, having successfully negotiated his prepared words, hurled his palm cards to the sky and bellowed...

"And f*** off."

Why he was so angry at his cards, nobody knows. Fornaroli would later try to claim he meant to say "vamos", but accidently swore aggressively in front of a stadium of fans and hundreds of thousands watching on tele.

Which is funny, because when I was stuck in traffic the other day and that motorcycle cut me off so I missed the yellow light by a nanosecond, I was saying "vamos" too.

Warwick Capper award for general weirdness

Tom Liberatore (Previous winner: Robert Allenby)

Ahh Libba. If I could give you every award on this list, I wouldn't even think twice.

Few professional athletes could embrace Liberatore's perma-cooked status and still obtain nearly universal public affection as he has. It helps that he's ace at footy, and that he plays for a team that won everybody over in 2016, but there's more to it than that.

If Tom Liberatore isn't your favourite player, you are wrong. ( Twitter: @tobie_chapman )

Libba is a scrapper. He waddles around the field with a filthy mo, doing the dirty work so the prettier dudes — Marcus Bontempelli, Tom Boyd and Easton Wood, if you're wondering who the prettiest Dogs are — can get the glory. He's a throwback and a look into a glorious, dreamlike future all at the same time.

Who else would win a grand final, chuck the medal on his head and regale the crowd about the magnificent Test century he just scored? You probably hadn't thought of Colin Miller for a decade or more, but that's where Libba's incredible brain immediately went.

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And who among us was surprised when Libba was pictured in mid-October with no hair atop his scalp, slotting snaggas for the mighty Vietnam Swans? Never change, Tom. You are everything that is pure on this earth.

Pat Rafter Award for most photogenic athlete

Laura Geitz (Previous winner: James Faulkner)

Geitz could easily have taken this award out last year as well, such is her impressive portfolio. Aside from being an inarguable superstar in some of Australia's most successful teams, she is absolute gold with the lens on her.

Pictured here at her most restrained, Laura Geitz is one of the country's best celebrators. ( AAP: Glenn Hunt )

Most of Geitz's brilliance comes in celebration, something she gets to do quite a lot. She plays hard and wins harder, and a last-gasp, thrilling Firebirds grand final win tends to bring out the best of her.

The photos of Geitz's infectious joy speak for themselves. By all means, hunt down as many as you can.

This, from last year's grand final, is more like it. ( AAP: Glenn Hunt )

Oh, and if there was an award for BEING NINE WEEKS PREGNANT WHILE CAPTAINING A GRAND FINAL WIN, she would win that too.

Michael Clarke Award for worst sledge

State of Origin (Previous winner: Nick Kyrgios)

The field was competitive this year, so instead of rewarding one smart-mouthed individual, we've decided to pay tribute to the sporting event that this year best represented a YouTube comments section.

STINK! ( AAP: Dean Lewins )

State of Origin. State against state, mate against mate, zinger against zinger. As Queensland waltzed its way to another series victory, it became apparent that this was no longer about football. This was a verbal stoush between some of the country's sharpest minds.

Who could forget David Klemmer's pithy quip to Corey Parker — "Get f***ed you c***" — or Johnathan Thurston's witty barb to Paul Gallen — "F*** your Blues". It was only a hint of mansplaining away from a full on US Presidential debate.

Gallen continued to cop it, Cameron Smith apparently telling him "that's why you're shit" after the game two loss, while Nate Myles instructed him to "enjoy your mad legacy, you c***".

The peak probably came when Queensland ran a bunch of highlights of its euphoric eight-in-a-row run on the Lang Park big screen during Blues training. That's actually kinda funny.

Todd Carney Award for most disgusting habit

Daniel Ricciardo

This new entry for 2016, inspired by Todd Carney's drink of choice, could only have gone to one man, and to one trend that made its way from suburban Australian backyards to German F1 podiums.

Whatever you do, don't think about how sweaty and disgusting his boot would be after an F1 race. ( AP: Vincent Thian )

The fabled "shoey" has been a thing for a while, normally poking its head out at around about 11:30pm when a night at the local cricket club has descended into a "who can be the grossest human alive" contest.

But Daniel Ricciardo has taken it mainstream, got the racing fraternity and Hollywood involved and left foreigners even more bemused by our country than they were before. Necking champagne from a sweaty racing boot? Nein danke.

All indications are the shoey is now spreading at an alarming velocity, and it's only a matter of time until somebody gets seriously ill. But until then, bottoms up.

Invincibles Award for most dominant team

Australian women's rugby sevens (Previous winner: Diamonds)

This became a two horse, and one actual horse, race but the Pearls got the nod for adding Olympic glory to their extensive catalogue of 2016 successes.

You would think winning everything would get boring, but no. ( Reuters: Phil Noble )

Australia's women's rugby sevens team quickly launched from relative obscurity to nationwide attention once we all realised these women were dead good, and were ruthlessly taking apart the world's biggest and best en route to global domination.

The Aussies took out the crown in Sau Paulo and the USA, won Oceania's main gong and became overall world champions at the end of the 2015-16 series. Impressive, yeah. But award winning, you ask?

Well, how about adding an Olympic gold medal in there, you ridiculously-hard-to-please person? We go nuts over any Olympic gold winner, so the fact Rio success was only icing on the Pearls' cake speaks volumes of their worthiness for this award.

Honourable mentions to Melbourne City's W-League team, who missed only due to lack of Olympicness, and to Winx, who missed out due to being a horse.

James Hird Award for biggest off-field disaster

Jarryd Hayne (Previous winner: FFA)

This is always one of the most hotly-contested prizes at this ceremony, but for an exemplary body of work with an incredible climax, there can only be one winner.

The face of a man who knows he has some explaining to do. ( ABC News: Ashleigh Stevenson )

Jarryd Hayne had a big year, chasing dreams all over the globe and winning the hearts of all who enjoy some healthy self-promotion and the odd bible verse on Twitter. He had a crack at the Olympics, returned to an NRL club that wasn't the one he promised to be faithful to, compared himself to Jesus and partied down with a bikie.

But Hayne's year of years wasn't complete until November, when a simple school visit turned into the most incredible Tuesday arvo assembly of all time. With his phone connected to public wifi and broadcasting on a big screen to dozens of impressionable children, a whole bunch of nekked people suddenly appeared.

Hayne claimed somebody had hacked the wifi and stitched him up, which is a pretty plausible theory, but that doesn't stop this being probably the funniest story of the year. If irony was made of chocolate, we'd all be drinking milkshakes right about now.

Barnaby Joyce Award for foreign relations

Faf du Plessis's airport shenanigans

Australia's reputation on the global stage has taken a bit of a hit this year, what with our holding Johnny Depp captive and all that refugee stuff and all. But those are issues we in sport land tend to try to leave to those a little more intelligent than us.

What we can comment on, though, is the breakdown in Australian-South African relations, and what that means for the two countries going forward. If nothing else, security measures at the airport could soon be going up.

Embroiled in the earth-shattering Mintgate scandal, Faf du Plessis was in a pretty filthy mood already when he arrived in Adelaide. But when a local reporter, armed with an "unknown object" (intelligence agencies have since deduced it was a 'microphone' that may or may not have doubled as some sort of automatic weapon), reinforcements were called in.

Faf enlisted the biggest, baldest, angriest compatriot he could find, and watched as he put that pesky pen pusher through (*into) a stained-glass window (*standard glass door) like a scene from a Marvel movie (*slightly drunken uncle at Christmas).

Won't somebody please think of the children?