(PLEASE SEE UPDATES BELOW)

This week we commence the “rounds” of football that break code that has reliably handled over 120 years of men’s and women’s football because that code relies on one principle: each team shall play no more than one game per round.

For the next four weeks the competition will be structured around weeks, with each week involving 10 or 11 games, thereby requiring 4 or 6 teams to play twice in the same week.

That will require me to make regular updates here, so please come back and visit often.

To begin with, here are WoSHBODS thoughts for the 9 games this week that involve every team only once. I’ll provide the forecasts for the other two games once the teams involved have played their first game of the week and I am able to update their ratings to reflect those results.

WAGERING AS AT 4PM FRIDAY

Markets have now been posted for the two “bonus” games of the round and WoSHBODS’ forecasts and wagers are shown below.

WAGERING AS AT 6PM TUESDAY

We are now locked in for all nine games of what I’ll call Round 4, since it involves all of the 18 teams exactly once.

(NB An earlier version of this table had the wrong details for the Suns v Cats game)

There is quite a bit of activity then, with sizeable swings possible in a number of games. I think WoSHBODS is trying to fit 30 weeks of activity into about 10.

WAGERING AS AT 5PM MONDAY

As I type this late afternoon on Monday, the TAB has posted markets only for the Wednesday and Thursday games.

WoSHBODS wants a piece of both, including, interestingly, some head-to-head Lions and some line Dogs in the same game. The details are below.