Thursday night AFL action is from Marvel Stadium and it is Essendon Bombers versus GWS Giants. We have full game coverage at itipsports.com.au and head there to get all our AFL and NRL bets for $17 weekend pass. We made mention last week that Essendon, like Carlton, are only a power club based on their large supporter base BUT that is it. They are ANYTHING BUT a power club on the ground, no better example than last week losing to a bottom ranked team Richmond AND kicking ONLY 4 goals in the process, simply woeful. Yes, they have injuries, BUT good clubs cover injuries AND don’t lose games like this. What a woeful display of AFL football it was on an AFL Saturday night stage.

Last weeks AFL sports betting delivered some terrific results including Adelaide Crows WIN $2.40, Essendon total game points under 88.5 and St Kilda line spread cover +9.5. Also, player exotic winning bets include Cadman 3+ goals at $5.00, Thilthorpe 3+ goals at $2.80 and Stringer 2+ goals at $2.80 for the GWS Giants.

On our modelling, Essendon is now on a 4 game TROUGH run, that is they have failed to beat market expectations 4 weeks in a row (with a bye in between). 3 of those trough results were significant troughs and this makes it all the more underperformed for Essendon. Essendon comes up against GWS Giants here on a 4 GAME PEAK PERFORMANCE run and last week a strong peak win over Geelong in a significant peak. That is a strong peak run for a well drilled team that is finals bound.

Head to head GWS Giants are 3-2 the last 5 games but last meeting it was Essendon 82-62 at Marvel Stadium. The prior clash was a whopping 162-36 GWS win by 126 points. 4 of the last 5 games have been in a relative tight range of 13-27 points and an average margin of 18.3 points per game. We get an average total game points of 157.8 points per game mid point of total points in the AFL.

We have a scenario of a 4 peak versus a 4 trough game run so we get an 8 game peak/trough differential. This would be as large a differential of any contest in the AFL this season. GWS Giants run of peaks looks overstretched and Essendon’s trough run we look for a bounce, as unlikely as that may seem on last weeks result. But our modelling points to this.
ESSENDON 2 units +42.5 and 1 unit win $8.00
TOTAL GAME POINTS 1 unit UNDER 172.5