At the start of a season there’s always a non-trivial risk that the MoS models will come up with forecasts that are riotously different from the bookmakers’, but this year it’s almost as if those bookmakers holidayed at Chez MoS over the offseason.

Those bookmaker forecasts have five games being decided by more than three goals, and three games by less than one goal, with the all-game average expected margin coming in at 16.8 points per game. By way of comparison, the figure for Round 1 of 2020 was 10.1 points per game, which works out at 12.6 points per game if you linearly adjust for the shorter quarters.

So, let’s see what we have.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

Amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters, there are contrarians in only 5 of the 9 contests, and more than solo contrarians only in the Pies v Dogs, and Dons v Hawks matchups.

Those two games also have the narrowest range of forecasts across the Margin Predictors - just 9 points in the Pies v Dogs game, and 5 points in the Dons v Hawks. No bigger, however, are the ranges for the Tigers v Blues (5 points), Dees v Dockers (5 points), Lions v Swans (9 points), and Giants v Saints (6 points) games, though it’s only the latter of that list where the likely victor is seen to be in any significant doubt.

Amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors there are double-digit percentage point ranges in only the North v Power (12% points) and Eagles v Suns (11% points) games.

Overall, then, there is a remarkably high level of agreement across all of the forecasters in virtually all of the games.

WAGERS

High levels of model agreement with the bookmakers makes for low levels of wagering, and this week sees only two small head-to-head wagers on the home team underdogs of Adelaide and North Melbourne, and a lone small line wager on North Melbourne +29.5 at $1.90.

No-one is going to get hurt this week (even if our Totals market wagering is considerably more lively)

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

The various scenarios for each wagered-upon game in terms of its possible effects on the value of the Combined Portfolio are then:

• Adelaide win: 0.7% x 3 x 30% = +0.6%

• Adelaide draw: 0.7% x (4/2 - 1) x 30% = +0.4%

• Adelaide loss: -0.7% x 30% = -0.2%

• Kangaroos win: 0.5% x 3.8 x 30% + 0.4% x 0.9 x 60% = +0.8%

• Kangaroos draw: 0.5% x (4.8/2-1) x 30% + 0.4% x 0.9 x 60% = +0.4%

• Kangaroos loss by less than 30 points: -0.5% x 30% + 0.4% x 0.9 x 60% = +0.1%

• Kangaroos loss by 30 points or more: -0.5% x 30% -0.4% x 60% = -0.4%

So, worst case is a loss of 0.6% of the Combined Portfolio, and best case is a gain of 1.4%.

To finish, here are MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS 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.