The Brisbane Lions’ victory over Sydney left minor premiers with a 9 and 9 record in Grand Finals since 2000. The only ladder positions with a better than 50% win rate in Grand Finals are now 2nd, 3rd, and 7th, as you can see in the table at right.

Overall, teams from 1st or 2nd now have a 52% record in Grand Finals, teams from 3rd or 4th a 47% record, and teams from 5th to 8th a 67% record.

Looking across the entirety of the Finals series’, we see that minor premiers now have a 70% win rate in Finals, while teams from 5th have a 49% win rate, which is the 4th-highest rate, behind only 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

Teams from 5th have played only 47 Finals since 2000, however, compared with 74 for minor premiers, 69 for teams from 2nd, and 74 for teams from 3rd.

With contrarianism amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters this week coming solely from the MoS trio, they were the only ones to score, leaving MoSHPlay_Marg the ultimate winner by 3 tips and on 138.5 from 216 (64%). RSMP_Simple finished in 2nd, and RSMP_Weighted in 3rd.

The all-Tipster average for the round came in at 0.3 from 1, taking the season-long figure to its final value of 131.8 from 216 (61%).

Margin prediction was hard this week, with mean absolute errors (MAEs) ranging from MoSHBODS_Marg’s 43.5 points per game to Bookie_9’s 67.3 points per game, with the all-Predictor average coming in at 59.9 points per game. The season-long all-predictor average ends the season at 27.1 points per game per predictor.

There were, again, no movements on the Margin Predictor Leaderboard.

The gap between 1st and 7th finishes at just 80 points, and that between 1st and 5th at just under 35 points. RSMP_Simple’s final lead is just under 25 points.

Log probability scores were positive for the MoS trio, and negative for all bookie-based forecasters, but the ordering on the Leaderboard was unchanged, with Bookie_LPSO finshing top, ahead of Bookie_RE and Bookie_OE.

WAGERING

Brisbane Lions were again the Investors’ darlings this week, their victory, combined with the total score, seeing all three Funds return a profit.

Overall, the Combined Portfolio rose by just over 6c, which sees it finish the season down by a smidge over 27c, that from a -7.4% ROT on a 3.7 turn.

All three underlying Funds also finished in the red, the Line Fund least of all, and the Head-to-Head Fund most of all.

Thank you to everyone who followed along this year. I hope your wagering was a lot more enjoyable.

I will, as always, conduct a post mortem of the season, but will leave a little space before doing that to ensure that it’s done with some level of distance and candour.