Well after covid quarantines, hubs, short quaters and the bizarre case of seeing a Hawthorn home game against the Bulldogs in Adleaide surely 2021 cannot be any weirder?
With relocation to Adelaide now fairly settled in and still quite a few red wines to trial cranking up the blog has bubbled to the surface of my to do list again.
The dusted off model has come up with a couple of difficult to accept long term predictions: Doggies topping the ladder at the end of the home and away. The doggies model relies on some easy early wins followed by some narrow confidence boosting wins over Tigers, GWS and Port. I will watch these early season games with some interest.
Worrying less about the long term fog filled future predictions - a focus on round 1
The surprise is how close the model thinks North will come to Port - gut feel is this is more to do with the remenants of last seasons infected data.
The three games I hope are competitive are the Dons v Hawks (I do not have high expectations for this being a showcase of football quality but I will be watching the Hawks for signs of good coaching) and the GWS v Saints (I have high hopes for this game for quality, tightness and to give an indication of each teams seasons potential - it is a big swing game for both teams in my modelling). The Pies v Dogs I have tipped Collingwood and allocated 20 points for the flexi tipping on footy tips.com (the other 80 points I will split between Essendon and StKilda).
I will also be keeping an eye on Fremantle v Demons: if Freo get within a goal (or win) I will be looking to see if it is beacause Freo have improved or Melbourne have failed to fire. A good showing by Freo, a poor performance by GWS and Freo could be looking at a good start to the year. Lose those two and they are on the back foot early. Melbourne follow up with Saints, Giants and Geelong so they will want to get off with a win.
Streak tipping it is line ball going with the Essendon tip and not Melbourne. I have stayed with the Essendon tip as it is early in the year. The Melbourne possible tip - I just do not have the confidence in the Melbourne data.
