This thread nearly got off the ground last year but ended up it was just me posting picks which got dull so I stopped. Decent limits on Pinnacle and lots of non Australian books have some sort of market so plenty of action available.

About 10 days till the season starts and then 23 weeks till finals with commonly 9 games each weekend. A quick run down of the 18 teams in the order they finished last season and common lingo...

Western Bulldogs - The Dogs - Melbourne team. Last years premiers in an upset result after many decades of not going close to a win.

Sydney Swans - The Swans - One of the most consistent and professional teams coached by John "The Horse" Longmire and featuring marquee player Buddy Franklin.

Geelong - The Cats - Geelong is like a satellite city to Melbourne about an hour down the freeway. Tough unit with a great record for the last decade or so. Featuring last years Brownlow winner (Brownlow = MVP) Patrick Dangerfield aka "Danger".

Greater Western Sydney - The Giants - An expansion team so only been in the league for a handful of years but due to big draft concessions full of huge talent that has now had time to mature. Favourites to win this season.

Hawthorn - The Hawks - Melbourne team. Been a dominant team in the last decade with a bunch of wins. Interest will be if they are now on the slide.

Adelaide - The Crows - Improvers last season with an impressive offensive set-up.

West Coast - The Eagles - Perth team. Bullies when playing at home not so great when they have to make one of the biggest trips in professional sport to the east coast.

North Melbourne - The Kangaroos or just Roos - Melbourne team. Made finals last year after a big start to the season but dropped away towards the finish. Lost a bunch of front end talent due to retirements at the end of the season and predicted to run crappy this season whilst re-building.

StKilda - The Saints - Melbourne team. Finished strong last season without making finals. Seemingly an improving list and game plan.

Port Adelaide - The Power - Reasons to support the Power; A) You are lacking front teeth, B) You think bashing an opposition coach as he walks back to his hotel after a game is a good idea, C) Some prospect your sister is also your mum, D) all of the above. Viewed as under achievers last season. Honourable mention for worst team song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiOgMnQWbbg

Melbourne - The Demons or the D's - This will be the 5th year into a massive rebuild. Have steadily improved over those 5 years and reasonable expectations to see some delivery this season.

Collingwood - The Magpies or the Pies and sometimes the Carringbush - Melbourne team. Traditionally the team you love or hate. They have the biggest supporter base. Coached by former great player Nathan Buckley aka Bucks.

Richmond - The Tigers - Melbourne team. I call them the Yo-Yo's which is fairly common. Good at looking promising but never delivering.

Carlton - The Blues - Melbourne team. In rebuild mode with a newish coach. Showed some promise last year but still an undeveloped list.

Gold Coast Suns - The Suns. Queensland team. An expansion team much like the Giants but lighter on talent. Marquee player is the now old Gary Ablett jnr aka "the son of God". Coached by the veteran coach Rodney "Rocket" Eade.

Fremantle - The Dockers. Perth team. Coached by the astute Ross Lyon. Had a shocker last season widely viewed as a dismantling of the defensive minded Lyon game plan. Ross is gold with an overall record to prove it and expected to improve. Easy winners of worst team song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFYuHUGbbw

Brisbane Lions - The Lions. Queensland team. Young team rebuilding with a new coach. Do have a decent home ground advantage (their home ground is called the GABBA) given the sometimes tropical sort of weather found in Brisbane compared to the cold of the more southerly teams in winter.

Essendon - The Bombers or the Dons - Melbourne team. All their serious talent got suspended last season following a fairly piss-ant drug scandal. Predicted by many to not win a game they actually won 3 and uncovered some decent new players. Getting most of the suspended talent back this season. Have a veteran coach John Worsfold aka Woosha.

The 9 Melbourne teams share 2 home grounds being Etihad Stadium (the only venue with a roof) or the cultural home of AFL, the Melbourne Cricket Ground or MCG or just the G.

I am running my usual largely subjective ML and spread bets this season as well as a much less subjective game total model (you need to be part statistician part meteorologist to do any good in this market). First up though is the pre-season punting ?

Nearly all the AFL wants Essendon to do decent this season - I see fairytale so have loaded up a bunch of Bombers under 11.5 wins.

Thats it so far - contemplating the Blues over 6.5 and I like the Dogs to miss the top 4.

Hawks over 13 wins, seeing it as high as $2.05 in some places.

Yes they were crazy lucky to finish as high as they did last season. Outperformed their Pythag expectation by a full 2.5 games and went 6-0 in games decided by 12 points or less. But is dropping the total to 13 wins taking the hate a bit too far?

Not much to say atm but will be following the thread

Certainly be something that will analyse deeply over the course of the season.

Pretty pumped about this season last season tried to win at totals without including 3 of the 5 most important factors in totals betting in my model and doing a poor job on 1 other so it did not go well. Coming in to this season with a rock-solid model for both sides and totals, expect to crush, but then again, maybe they ban Pinnacle in Australia which I imagine wouldn't be great for the market.

How much can you bet on sides/totals other than at Pinny? Are there any other decent books for this (to bet at least 1k but preferably much more)? I am based in Mexico.

AFL Totals are tough compared to other sports because of the vagaries of home/away/neutral and different sized venues and of-course weather. Most models I know of in the past were historically based and they got blown out of the water last year with the impact of some rule changes and probably a competition wide style shift - basically trying to match the Hawks precision kicking game which if you do it good or bad leads to higher scores.

Dunno if access to the regular Oz books is an issue in Mexico - I still have a Topsport account in my name that has not been limited and same for Crownbet although you will need a push chart as they often run crazy sort of lines rather than a straight up $1.90 over/under market line.

Not hate and not just that they ran good last year in tight games - I think they have done the smart and professional thing to move some ageing talent on this season and probably the internal expectation is for something of a rebuild phase this year - 14/8 would likely have them close to top 4 in a regular looking year which I think is about right for preseason expectation

With normal luck the Hawks win 13.5 games last year, then you take out two of the better albeit probably aging players in the league and another decent regular player; the replacements are a couple of averageish starters and an ok youngster. They do get Roughhead back who didn't play at all last year and from sound of things he's healthy. Seems like 12.5-13 is about right; they will still have one of the older squads in the league so you wouldn't expect too much improvement from the guys that remain.

Good points, thanks - was just trying to work out if it was an overreaction to them letting Mitchell and Lewis go, moves which I thought were pretty smart.

Swans v Port GT u 173.0

no serious action for me in the first few rounds but with rain likely during the game I could not resist loading this one up

Early games have seen a lot of quick goals out of clean wins from clearances can't help but think this no third man rule is related. Could be variance as well though, pre-season totals weren't all that excessive compared to last year.

In my view pre-season is not worth factoring in - If you looked at just raw scoring numbers for the last 100 VFL/AFL seasons it would show higher scores at the beginning of the season - Some of that is probably weather that starts good and transitions into bad but I think in the last say 5-10 seasons it is also about honing the team skills by which I mean defence and teams starting the season off their peak - an AFL season is a brutal marathon all about recovery from the last game so it makes sense that some teams in particular the serious contenders start a little slow

My preliminary view is that the "no third man up" change will slow the game down a bit but no-one really knows and you might be right