The AFL Ladder for Punters: The Line Ladder shows you who to bet on

The traditional AFL Ladder might be the single most important bit of footy information, but it offers precious little for AFL punters!

That’s why we take things to the next level with the AFL Line Ladder.

AFL Line Ladder: The AFL Ladder for punters

So the 2023 season is done, and the line betting results produced two outliers at either end of the line ladder. Geelong were the team to be with all year – the bookies simply couldn’t catch them as they cleared the line 17 times in their 22 matches. We’ve added the results of having a $100 line bet on them every week at odds of $1.90, and the Cats returned a super $1030 profit at 47% profit-on-turnover.

At the other end, you didn’t want to be anywhere near cellar-dwellers North Melbourne, who covered the line just 6 times this season for a loss on the same bets of $1060.

The AFL Ladder

Throughout the season, the AFL ladder is the most-watched piece of information. Where you finish dictates if you play finals and your path to the premiership, so the focus on it is understandable!

The AFL Ladder is quite straightforward: four premiership points for a win, two for a draw and zero for a loss. Clubs are ranked by premiership points on the ladder, with ties broken by percentage (percentage is total points scored as a percentage of total points conceded in all matches).

AFL Ladder positions at the end of the home and away season determine which clubs play finals. The top 8 clubs on the AFL ladder qualify for the final series. 1st to 4th placed teams gain a double chance and participate in qualifying finals, while 5th to 8th placed teams enter sudden-death elimination finals. Teams placed 9th to 18th do not play finals.

The AFL Ladder for Punters

The Line Ladder is a fairly simple premise: it’s the same as the regular AFL ladder but we measure performance against the closing betting line instead of the scoreboard.

For example, let’s say Collingwood were playing North Melbourne. The closing line is -9.5 (Collingwood) and +9.5 (North Melbourne.

Collingwood win the game by 20 points.

Collingwood covered the line by 10.5 points. So they record 1 cover, and their ‘Final margin v closing line’ figure is 10.5.

North Melbourne record 1 miss, and their ‘Final margin v closing line’ figure is -10.5.

Then those figures just accumulate through the season. The ladder is ranked first by covers, then by cumulative margin vs the closing line.

That’s all there is to it. It measures team performance, but in relation to the market. So you get a view of how well the betting market is performing in predicting each team’s results. A good example of this in 2019 was Carlton. For the first half of the year, their win and loss performance was awful. However, they were getting a lot closer to their opponents than the market thought they would, and very often covering the line. They consistently sat at or near the top of the line ladder despite being glued to the bottom of the league ladder. That’s the sort of information that is valuable as a punter… yes they were losing games, but the market was underestimating their performance, and they were consistently covering their lines. Looking at the AFL Ladder, you’d have never backed them. But as the Line Ladder made clear, they were a good bet at the line.