The Curse of the Bye

This year, with an odd number of participants, teams have had to deal with byes and, generally, they've not dealt with them well. Aside from the two occasions on which teams two teams have met, both on the back end of a bye (denoted with asterisks in the table below), only two teams have won in the week immediately after a bye. 

Both of these victories occurred in Round 6. Other than that it's been wall-to-wall losses the like of which we've not seen since the stockmarket crash of 2009.

Here's the detail:

Fremantle's been the beneficiary of the bye phenomenon on three occasions, as has Geelong, while Carlton's benefited twice. Melbourne's also had two opportunities to cash in but has banked only once.

Reason enough perhaps to be nervous if you're a Tigers or a Port supporter