The Grand Final pits 1st against 5th, the first such pairing this millennium - in fact, the first time that 5th has made the Grand Final at all. Somewhat surprisingly, 1st has a worse than 50:50 record in Grand Finals across this period.

You can see the unique nature of the 2021 Finals series by scanning the schematic below. Never before, for example, have 2nd and 3rd both gone out in the Preliminary Finals.

All of that said, despite the Grand Final pitting 1st against 5th, the expected victory margin for Melbourne is only just a tick over a goal.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

There’s not much variation in the Grand Final tips. No contrarian tips amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters this week and, amongst the Margin Predictors, a narrow forecast range of just 4 points, with Bookie_9 and RSMP_Simple combining to define the ends of that range.

That means there’ll be no movement on the Head-to-Head Tipsters’ Leaderboard, and very little on the Margin Predictors’.

Amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, the probability estimate range is also narrow at just 3%, with Bookie_OE anchoring one end of the range, and MoSSBODS_Prob the other.

The probability estimates of the MoS twins are, once again, also insufficiently different from the bookmaker-based Predictors to seriously imperil their positions on the Leaderboard.

As such, we’ll finish the season with the MoS trio filling the top three spots on the Head-to-Head Tipster and Head-to-Head Probability Predictors Leaderboards, but probably three of the bottom four spots on the Margin Predictor Leaderboard.

WAGERS

This week, no head-to-head or line wagers.

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

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.