Collingwood clung on to ensure that Minor Premiers now have a better than 50% win rate in Grand Finals since 2000, as shown in the table at right. They still, however, have a nett losing record against teams finishing 2nd in the home-and-away season.

In percentage terms, teams from 7th (1-0; 100%) and from 3rd (7-5; 58%) now have the best records, and teams from 4th, 5th and 6th (all 0-1; 0%) have the worst.

In leading at every change, Collingwood became the 68th V/AFL Grand Final winner to do so, such coast-to-coast victories accounting for well over 50% of contests.

It was, however, very nearly a come from behind win for the Lions, which would have been only the 7th instance of such a Grand Final result in history.

In fact, the winning team has trailed at three-quarter time in only 11 of 125 Grand Finals.

Looking at performances across the entire Finals series, we see that the ordering based on win rate almost matches that based on home and away ladder position, with the notable exception of teams finishing 4th, who have the second-worst record of all at just 34%.

Less startling is that teams finsihing 6th have a slightly better record than teams finishing 5th, and have played one more Preliminary Final and the same number of Grand Finals.

The result cost MoSSBODS_Marg, as the week’s only contrarian Tioster, a tip, and saw it fall to 7th on the Leaderboard. MoSHBODS_Marg and RSMP_Simple end up taking joint top spot, finishing onleadership on 148 from 216 (69%).

The all-Tipster average for the round was 0.9 from 1, which took the all-season figure to 141.9 from 216 (66%).

Margin prediction was again very strong this week, with mean absolute errors (MAEs) ranging only from 0.5 to 12 points per game, and 2.9 if we exclude MoSSBODS_Marg.

Best, narrowly, was Bookie_Hcap’s 0.5 points per game, and worst was MoSSBODS_Marg’s 11.9 points per game.

The only movement on the Leaderboard this week was MoSSBODS_Marg falling to 8th behind Bookie_3.

Log probability scores were all positive this week, except for MoSSBODS_Prob, and best for MoSHPlay_Prob. It therefore retained 1st place, with MoSSBODS_Prob and Bookie_OE holding onto 2nd and 3rd places. MoSHBODS_Prob dropped to last, but only by the barest of margins.

WAGERING

The Lions’ goals with just over 90 seconds to play rescued Investors’ Line bet and ensured that the season would end with another profitable round.

The Combined Portfolio finishes up by 21.4c on the season, that from a 19% ROT on a 1.14 turn.

That is now 5 consecutive years of green ink for the Combined Portfolio, and 7 from the past 8.