AFL Ladder for Punters: The Line Ladder

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

Potential mismatches for Round 16…

• Geelong (4th on the Line Ladder) v North Melbourne (18th) Geelong -65.5 $1.90 with TopSport
• Richmond (3rd on the Line Ladder) v West Coast (16th) Richmond -38.5 $1.90 with TopSport
• Fremantle (2nd on the Line Ladder) v Port Adelaide (13th) Fremantle -15.5 $1.95 with TopSport

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.