Australian Football Pools - What's Different?

Author: Phil Marks

The Australian football pools season gets under way in April, and Australian-based pools coupons are published in Britain from mid-late May onward. Australian pools are a very different proposition to British pools, but team-form based systems still work, but with a few tweaks.

So What’s Different?

• Playing standards. The best teams play well below the standard of even an English third division team.
• Teams die and are re-born from time to time, and name changes are not unusual.
• There are usually instances of points deductions for breaking of rules each season.
• The difference in performance between top and bottom sides in a division can be massive, and when this is the case then a lower performing team might not even show for a match, resulting in a forfeit (less common these days).
• With a forfeited match, a score of 3-0 can be awarded against the loser, which has a big impact on goal difference.
• The transfer market is very active, and the move of just one good player can make a massive difference to team’s performance.
• The crowds - for many games there are very few supporters, if any other than the team coach and substitutes!

It really is a frontiersman’s game!

Whilst most serious 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, there are other interesting aspects too.

For example, the statistics show that when a team loses at home, then the probability of winning its next match, if it is an ‘Away’, is relatively high. Typically, almost half of teams avoid losing in away games following a home defeat.

This means that when completing an Aussie pools coupon, the punter needs a much stronger bias towards Away wins than would be the case in the English football pools.

Home-Away-Draw Sequences

More detailed analysis of the home-lose-win sequences can be rewarding, and uncovering ‘Away’ bankers for a coupon is possible – something which is unthinkable on the English coupon (think about some of the ‘certain away wins’ in the English Premiership in the most recent season, which just didn’t turn out to be as expected). Again, this is down to the performance range within a given league – very wide in Australian football, and relatively much narrower in British soccer.

Indeed, predicting Away wins is much more lucrative for Aussie pools.

Now in the UK football pools, some people may have a view about biasing draw selections towards (or away from) Scottish leagues. In Australian pools, there are clear differences in performance statistics across the various leagues (there may be up to twelve or thirteen leagues appearing on an Australian football pools coupon); this affects the strategy for draw selection on the Treble Chance football pools.

Finally, fixed odds betting on Aussie pools can be rewarding if enough time and effort is put into analysing the bookmakers’ odds. The wide range of performance levels means that occasionally a bookie may miscalculate odds and make it possible to lay bets across bookmakers which are almost certain to pay.

See the list below for more information on staking strategies and information resources.

© 2010-11 Phil Marks

More Info on these Pages:

• australian pools strategy tips
  
  What you must know about Australian Football Pools if you are to make the most of your pools stake and get the odds more in your favour
• australian away wins
  
  What you must know about Australian Football Pools if you are trying to pick away wins
• australian pools
  
  Resources for Australian Football Pools