One of the universal experiences of being an AFL fan is having your confidence stripped bare over the years, to the point that even when your team leads comfortably with five minutes to go you refuse to start celebrating early.

I’m certainly the kind of footy fan who is more nervous about a game where my side is considered the favourites than one where we’re the underdogs - and I don’t think that I’m alone in that respect.

But just how often does each AFL club turn out to be a flake as the favourite – and how often do they get up when they’re the underdogs? Today we look to answer both questions.

The difficulty in assessing this question lies in how much data to use. Teams can change a lot in terms of personnel over the years and too long a time period may paint too broad of a picture.

On the other hand, if you only use the most recent years of data, then many sides – particularly those who were very rarely the favourite or very rarely the underdog – just won’t have that much information available for you.

We’re going to do a bit of both today and look at both data from 2010 to present and 2018 to present to provide both a short-term and long-term picture for your team.

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WINNING AS FAVOURITES

This chart shows the percentage of matches that each AFL club has won when they were considered pre-match favourites from 2010 through to the present.

Richmond have a narrow lead as the AFL’s most bankable favourite over this ten-year period, having won 78% of the matches where they entered with shorter odds than their opponents.

Fremantle, West Coast, Hawthorn and Geelong all round out the top five – all of them very good sides for significant periods during the era that we’re looking at here.

The opposite end of the table is almost heartbreakingly predictable with Melbourne the worst of all clubs, saluting when named favourites just 59.2% of the time.

Carlton (60.3%) and Brisbane (62.7%) round out the bottom three, both sides that have spent a lot of the past decade on struggle street.

Port Adelaide at 63.4% is perhaps a little more surprising to see in the bottom four, but they did have some rough years to start the decade and have often frustrated fans even when competitive in recent years.

Speaking of more recent seasons, Richmond’s numbers only get better if we look at the numbers just for 2018-present, in which they’ve won 90.6% of matches when starting as favourites.

Surprisingly the next best in this time period is Gold Coast with 83.3% - though this comes from only six matches starting as the favourite in this time, so it should be taken with a few grains of salt.

Carlton (50%) and Sydney (52.1%) are the worst performing sides when named favourites 2018-present. The Swans in particular have often inexplicably struggled on their home field in recent years.

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WINNING AS UNDERDOGS

This chart shows the percentage of matches that AFL sides have won when they were not considered the favourites by pre-match betting odds in the period 2010-present.

Geelong, ironically, have proven to be the league’s most dangerous underdogs over this stretch of time, winning 47.5% - nearly half – of matches where they were outsiders.

Hawthorn aren’t far behind at 43.9%, while Sydney and Collingwood are the other clubs in the league boasting at least a 40% win rate as underdogs.

Indeed if there’s an AFL club out there living up to their song, Sydney – who sing “what though the odds be great or small, Swans will go in and win over all” – might be it.

Gold Coast on the other hand have been able to sneak through a win as underdogs just 13.8% of the time, comfortably the league’s worst.

GWS with 20.2% are second from the bottom while Melbourne and Brisbane round out the bottom four.

More recent trends put Hawthorn has the best underdog side in the AFL from 2018-to present, winning as outsiders a remarkable 51.8% of the time.

That’s almost on par with their 57.1% wining rate as favourites in the same period of time.

Port Adelaide are the next best winning 44.4% of matches as underdogs in recent years, while Collingwood, Essendon, Geelong, GWS, Sydney and West Coast all go at 40% or higher.

Gold Coast at 12.5% and Adelaide at 16.7% are the league’s two worst sides for winning as underdogs since 2018.

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BEATING THE LINE

Knowing how often a team wins or doesn’t when they’re the favourites or the underdogs is good, but it doesn’t offer a lot of nuance around just how strongly favoured or 'unfavoured' they were.

We can use the betting line instead to look at how well or how poorly a team performed versus the popular expectation.

For this chart, we’re comparing a team’s average result when they were the favourites versus the average line set for them in those matches.

West Coast had an average line of 23.2 points when they were favourites from 2010-present, but recorded an average result of +27 points in those games.

Their average result was 116% of the average line, the best of any side in the league over that time period.

Richmond are essentially on par with West Coast, behind by just 0.01%, while North Melbourne and GWS round out the top four, both sitting at around 106%.

Essendon have been the league’s shakiest recording just 61.9% of the expected line when named favourites from 2010-present – Melbourne, Brisbane and Carlton round out the bottom four.

To look at this same measure from the underdog perspective instead we have to flip it – comparing a team’s average result when they were underdogs to the average line set against them. 

This means a lower percentage rather a higher percentage is ideal, and Hawthorn get another feather in their cap here, conceding just 18.5% of the expected line to their opponents when considered underdogs from 2010-present.

Geelong (32.5%) and Sydney (49.7%) are the other sides who’ve kept it below 50%.

Adelaide and Fremantle however have been the worst performers in this respect, conceding 116% and 115% respectively of the expected line during this time period.

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

Not a lot of these numbers come as a big surprise – those teams that have performed well over the last decade are unsurprisingly also the ones who’ve regularly been able to turn favouritism into wins, or prove dangerous as an underdog.

But there’s a few interesting trends in particular that say something about the identity of teams either recently or in the longer term.

In particular, Hawthorn’s ability to win as underdogs, but struggle to win as favourites in the last few years is telling of a side that are dangerous opponents to underestimate, but not a top-tier team overall.

Essendon’s abysmal performance versus the line as favourites too feels characteristic of a club that just never seems able to sustain strong patches of form.

Will sides like the Hawks or the Bombers – or for that matter Gold Coast, Carlton, Brisbane and the like – be able to leave behind poor numbers in future years to come? Only time will tell.

Note: The stats on points from stoppages/possessions used in this article are recorded as they were published after each game in the Herald Sun.

For a small number of matches these stats were never published, and there is also known to be a small number of typographical errors in the original source data.

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