What you should know about Staking Strategies for the Australian Football Pools

Australian football is not at all like soccer, either in the purely physical sense, or in its organisation. It is generally accepted (and supported by statistics) that Australian football teams play closer to form than do teams in British soccer – for example, the range of playing standard between top and bottom teams in a league is quite wide leading to greater predictability.

First off, a basic fact about the statistics: Teams come and go (and change their names) very often in Australian football. A team may disappear for a season or two and then re-form. So, tracking teams in a statistics database can be quite a challenge.

Leagues

Digging at the statistics shows that some leagues have much higher standards than others, and in particular some leagues have much higher draw percentages than others (for example South Australia), whereas other leagues have a much lower percentage of draws. So, if you are playing the treble chance (draw games) then you bias your selections towards the leagues with higher draw rates – that is forecasting more draws in the upper half of the coupon. Obviously, this depends on using a suitable performance rating system to assess likely match outcomes, before introducing bias.

Home/Away/Draw Sequences

Win/lose/draw sequences can appear to be very strange. It is not at all unusual for a team losing at home to go win their next match (if it is an away). The numbers bear this out, but the explanations can be a bit difficult to fathom. One view is that this is because of the range of playing standards within given leagues.

 
 

Why are the Australian Football Pools Different?

The Australian football season usually gets under way in April, and Australian-based pools coupons are published in Britain from mid-late May. Australian football pools have quite a different statistical profile to British pools. Team-form based systems still work, but with a few subtle changes.

What are the Differences?

The game is rougher. Aussie football is not football as we know it elsewhere in the world. It is much more physical and injury rates are much higher than in soccer.
Playing standards are lower. The best teams play well below the standard of even an English third division team.
Teams disappear and are re-born regularly and team names change regularly.
There are usually several instances of points deductions for breaking of rules each season!
The difference in performance between top and bottom sides in a league or division can be massive, and when this is the case then a lower performing team might not even turn up for a match, resulting in a forfeit.
With a forfeited match, a score of even 10-0 can be awarded against the loser, which has a big impact on goal difference.
Transfers – players change teams with great regularity, and the move of just one good player can make a massive difference to team’s performance

It really is a frontiersman’s game!

Many serious pools punters accept that ‘playing to form’ is much more apparent in Australian football because of the much wider range of standards within a given league, but there are other interesting aspects too.