Only three games this week are expected to be decided by less than two goals, while four are expected to have a winning margin of greater than three goals, so we might see some increase in the season’s average winning margin, which currently stands at just 27.1 points per game.

(Average margins tend to be higher than average expected margins for reasons that are obvious when you think about it for a bit, so I’ll leave it as an exercise to nut out why. So far this season, the TAB average expected margin has been just 11.0 points per game. This round’s average is 17.1.)

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

It’s Home Sweet Home alone that’s providing the only contrarian head-to-head tips this week, the remaining Tipsters all lining up solidly behind the nine favourites.

There’s a little more uncertainty about the likely winners when you dive into the detail, with a slew of single-digit margin forecasts in the Suns v Blues, Dogs v Dees, and Dockers v Swans games.

That said, there are very high levels of agreement about the size of the final margins, with the largest range of forecasts across the Margin Predictors coming in the Crows v Cats game where it’s just 18 points. In six of the games the range is less than 10 points.

Similarly, when we turn to the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, we find broad agreement about the likelihood of home team victories, with the largest spread of probability estimates coming for the Pies v Roos game where it’s just 14% points. In six of the games the range is less than 10% points.

So, there’ll be no dramatic movements on any of the Leaderboards this week.

WAGERS

Because of the high levels of agreement, it’s an extremely subdued week of wagering, with just two head-to-head bets, a small and speculative one on Essendon at $5.15, and a larger one on Fremantle at $1.72.

(Please click on the image below to access a larger version.)

You can do your own Ready Reckoner maths this week.

To finish, here are MoSS2020's and MoSH2020's opinions about likely team scoring.

Commentary about these forecasts will come in the week's Overs/Unders blog and MoSHPlay’s various forecasts will be posted after the relevant team line-ups are made public.