Australian rules football betting guide

Australian rules football, also called Australian football, footy and Aussie rules is a discipline of sport that originated in the 1859 in Melbourne, Australia. The sport was created when school students from Melbourne started playing their version of Rugby on modified cricket field. In the nutshell, in Australian rules football,    two teams consisting of eighteen players try to score points by kicking the ball between the two goal posts. The players can touch the ball with any part of their body but they can not throw it and hold it for a longer period of time. The team with more points wins. Footy is a contact sport that includes tackles.

The competition for Australian rules football is the Australian Football League (AFL). It is a league that consists of 18 teams that play each other at least once and after 23 matches the top 8 teams are decided and advance to the playoff round.    Then a knockout system results in two finalists. Each year the winner of the championship is decided in AFL Grand Final, which is, as for today, club championship final with the highest attended number of people in the world.

• One of the characteristic features of Aussie rules are local rivalries and derbies. The reason for this is that almost half of the teams in the tournament was created in Melbourne. After years of competing, the neighbouring districts and suburbs started passionate rivalries against each other. It is worth remembering while betting on particular fixtures, especially when teams from Melbourne play.
   
• Another thing to remember is the fact that Australians mostly use the decimal odds system and often mistakenly put a Australian dollar sign in front of the odds. If you are not from the Australia it might be very confusing for you. It is also worth to research the bookmakers that operate in the country because some of them may not ring a bell to you, with some not available in Europe or even the U.S.
   
• It is also good to know the stadium that the team you want to bet on will play. Unlike in other ball-involved team sports, in Australian football there is a significant difference in size between some of the grounds of teams from the AFL. That is why some teams are better on smaller grounds and some are big-ground specialists. While the Melbourne Cricket Ground may be used in every round of the regular season because of the number of Melbourne-based teams, other stadiums are not as well-known to non-Australians and can give a major advantage before the betting. It is somewhat similar to the types of courts in tennis.
   
• Because of its geography, Australia is a very demanding continent. The distances between two closest to each other towns can be counted in thousands of miles. Some cities with teams in the AFL are so remote from each other that players are very tired after travelling to and from them. Good example is the city of Perth. What is more, despite being a one-nation continent and popular opinion, the weather in Australia can be very different in some places. The most important weather factor is the wind, although most arena’s are build to not be prone to the wind.
   
• A good thing to do is to observe the changes in the squads of the teams as well as the changes in the coaching staff. In Australia drafts and college teams are not as important and publicised as in the American NFL. Nevertheless it is very important to know as much as you can about the players. Apart from obvious reason of them being sometimes able to completely change the result it is advisable to know who is the best player or who scores most goals in a season or the Final because of the Medal betting.The bookmakers take bets on various AFL awards, with most important prestigious being the Brownlow Medal, which is awarded to the best player of the AFL. Usually, after few first games it is possible to determine which player will have the most tackles or scored points and which teams should be the top 8 and maybe even which will be in the Final. As in other sports, the earlier you bet, the better are the odds, but higher the risk at the same time. Proper knowledge and use of both team and individual player statistics can be a major advantage for a bettor even at the early stages of the season.
   
• An important factor in betting on a league game in every sport is the schedule. It is good to look through the match dates, look for a team you want to bet on or for interesting games like rivalries. With the help of the schedule you can almost decide the results of an upcoming fixtures. With already mentioned knowledge of the weather impact and the importance of the home ground advantage as well as the size and type of the field you can determine the outcome of the game more easily. What is more, you can check direct matches between the teams you want to bet on from and the last few seasons.
   
• Always remember about the possibility of injuries that can change the odds seconds before the start of the game, it is very hard to but not something impossible to predict. If a particular period in the team schedule is full of difficult matches and/or have away games in distant cities you can be sure that the players will not be 100% fit after those types of games, with some of them with serious injuries. Remember that it is very contact sport and serious injuries, excluding he player from he rest of the season or even ending his career, might happen.