COLLINGWOOD VS BRISBANE (MCG)

Front up we have the two top placed teams of the home and away season playing off in the AFL Grand Final 2023 at the home of football, the MCG. It is the Collingwood Magpies versus the Brisbane Lions. It has been 8 years since this last occurred. Collingwood get here via two very hard fought close finals wins over Melbourne and GWS. Brisbane get here via two more comfortable finals wins over Port Adelaide and Carlton. Do you like the team with the more comfortable wins or the match hardened one with the hard fought wins? It is AFL betting sports tips finest day of the season, the “Big Dance”.

Form

Collingwoods recent form is average with basically a 50/50 win/loss ratio the last third of the season. Brisbane however are running more like 80% win/loss in this period. However Collingwood are in the 60-70% win/loss range at the MCG in recent times as opposed to Brisbane who are running at about 10-15%. So there are multi arguments both ways here which likely level each other out and gives us the chance of a great AFL Grand Final.

Recap

So the AFL Grand Final 2023 all comes down to this, 4 quarters of footy to find out who is crowned the premiers of 2023. These two sides have a VERY recent meeting as they played in Round 23 at Marvel stadium. The result was a high scoring contest (124-100) that saw the Lions home by 4 goals. Its hard to use this match as some type of reference point for the possible outcome here. The betting market swung WILDLY in the lead up to this match. Collingwood installed the initial $1.65 favs but as the week progressed they lost Darcy Moore, Jordan De Goey and Bobby Hill that saw their odds totally flip to become the $2.15 underdog…and so it panned out. 

The BIG X-Factor in this game is the MCG. These two sides have only played twice at the G in the last 10 years both having BIG wins. Collingwood a 45 point Round 10 2017 and Brisbane Round 21 2014 by 67 points. So it doesn’t really give us a guide. However Collingwood play here all the time AND in the last 15 trips to the MCG Brisbane have only won once so that’s a BIG hurdle to overcome. 

Brisbane has won the last 5 head to head contests against Collingwood with 3 of those games at the GABBA. Of the last five head to heads we have two tight games of 1 and 7 points, two in the 20 point range and one BIG near 100 point Brisbane win.

The total points has been very high with the last 5 games between the two an average of 190 points. Brisbane has been able to kick BIG scores with 4 scores of the last 5 of 98 points or higher. The market is 165.5 and we like the OVER total game score as we like Brisbane OVER 79.5 points.

Final Thoughts

The lead ins for both sides were different in some ways. Collingwood are CLEARLY coming through the higher intensity Prelims AND historically this has been a great indicator of the premiership winner. The harder Preliminary Final has more often than not produced the premiership winner. 

Collingwood and Brisbane BOTH produced “trough wins” on our metrics to market expectations. There is no clear edge in our human behaviour model on this game. 

Without doubt the salivating contest will be at the coalface. Neale McCluggage, Dunkley up against DeGoey, Pendlebury, Crisp and Nick Daicos at times is where this game could be won and lost. It shapes to be an EPIC Grand Final on the 20th anniversary of the last time these two sides played off in the big one.

No hard bet on the WIN or HANDICAP using our Human Behaviour model but the MCG factor has a lean for us to Collingwood. We take the following bets.
LEAN ONLY Collingwood WIN $1.80
1 unit OVER Total Game Points 165.5
.25 unit Brisbane OVER 79.5 points
.25 unit Double Collingwood -5.5 / Total Game Points OVER 165.5 at $3.60