It is nice not to have an "Essendon wrap around special feature newspaper" to read

But I had to travel to Asia to avoid the front and back pages devoted to the debacle that is "the supplements scandal".  There was not one word of the Essendon/ Hird/ AFL commentary in the Vietnam Daily (English) paper.  Anyway the beauty of Australia TV is I should get to see three live games from the air conditioned comfort of a work funded hotel room.  I need to check the actual schedule to see what order the games are actually being played and which ones I will get to see.  Hopefully the Hawks Swans game is one of them where my model has gone against the bookies and sided with the home team.

As mentioned in previous blogs the Carlton Port game should also be a highlight - again sided with the home team: I will need to make a decision on how to rate home ground advantage for Adelaide teams next year wit ha "new" home ground (but populated with the same supporter base so probably not much difference I suspect).

As notable in the table below I am coming last in the "monitored modellers cup" (the best MAFL tipper on the MAFL site is on 141 but I use the average of the head to head predictions to compare against).  After this round I will start the navel gazing and review the year - the upsets and versus previous years and team by team.  Got to have something to do in the preseason.

Round 21 - trying to maintain enthusism with the season

Some difference between me and the other model tipsters with the Bombers v Roos - my model picks the Bombers (my model does not have a coach/ assistant coach/ doctor/ media frenzy/... impact effect: not sure if this would be a positive or negative impact like a new coach effect, althogh I tend to think that the stress levels would have to have a negative effect on the players so this one could be ugly in a big way).