Data taken from the Herald Sun: odds to win premiership: The Herald Sun odds imply that the top eight will be:
Collingwood: $3.50
Geelong: $4.50
Hawthorn: $7
Carlton: $8
StKilda: $15
West Coast: $15
Essendon: $21
Fremantle: $21
Also Gold Coast to do better than Port with GWS supporting the whole ladder.
Short answer: Eight points
Longer answer: two scoring shots: eight points
This is based on the home and away games from the start of the 2000 season through until the end of the 2011 season. The averages are:
Home team: (red line in graph below)
14.45 goals, 12.37 behinds: 99.06 total
Away team: (blue line in graph below)
13.27 goals, 11.47 behinds: 91.07 total
Near enough to 8 point advantage
This is raw home ground advantage, we can of course get more technical and look at interstate teams and neutral grounds. But for the one step up from mug punter (who tosses a coin to determine their tips back the home team. (1219 wins vs 882 losses and 22 draws)(58.4% win rate).
All team score distributions shown via the black line (close enough to a normal distribution). Winning margins shown in orange (in groups of six points: i.e. nearly 300 games decided by a goal or less, plus 22 draws)
