This week sees a return to nine game rounds and feels an appropriate point at which to decide that we are officially 'in the run home'.

Beating Carlton by only 20 points and 10 Scoring Shots wasn't quite enough to convince either of the MoS Systems to raise Collingwood's rating this week, with the result that they now find themselves rated 3 Scoring Shots and about 11 points lower than Richmond.

Five of six favourites won this week, which kept the all-Tipster average high across the Head-to-Head Tipsters, and a general lack of disagreement allowed ENS_Linear to retain its one tip lead over Bookie Knows Best at the head of the Leaderboard.

If the bookmakers are right, not a single game should be expected to generate more than 168 points over this elongated in time and truncated in content weekend of football.

Just six more games this weekend, but only one with a single-digit expected margin and five with expected margins of roughly four goals or more. Unless you're a fan of one of the firm favourites or these pre-game expectations prove to be wrong, this round could get fairly ugly, fairly quickly from an aesthetic viewpoint.

Richmond didn't do quite enough this week to impress either of the MoS twins and so saw its rating lead over Collingwood cut on both Systems, albeit by only small amounts. Richmond is now about a 2.7 Scoring Shot or 10 point better side that Collingwood, according to the Systems' ratings.

Most Head-to-Head Tipsters tipped the card this week, which once again left the top of the Leaderboard unchanged. ENS_Linear still leads Bookie Knows Best by a single tip but has improved its season-long record to 80.5 from 111 (73%).

If the bookmakers are right, not a single game should be expected to generate more than 168 points over this elongated in time and truncated in content weekend of football.

We have the first of two back-to-back, snack-sized rounds this weekend where only two-thirds of the teams get to take the field across a four-day span. 

Collingwood's emphatic victory over Melbourne on Monday impressed the MoS twins enough to have them both install the Pies as their second-highest rated teams, dumping the Dees into 4th while leaving Richmond and West Coast in 1st and 3rd places, respectively, on both Systems.

We knew before the round started that there'd be no significant moves on the Head-to-Head Tipster Leaderboard, though we might reasonably have hoped for a better than 4 from 7 return, but that's what we got from all the Tipsters except Home Sweet Home, who bagged only 3 from 7.

Seven games this week, and not much to make you happy if you're craving attacking, high-scoring football, with only the Lions v Dons game expected to breach the 180 mark for total score.

Just the seven games this week as we navigate through the who's-got-the-bye-again-this-weekend portion of the season, which won't end until we're through Round 14. Having successive weeks with 8, 9, 7, 6 and 6 games seems an odd way to accommodate the effectively nine games worth of byes required, but I'm sure there were constraints that necessitated it. 

Richmond remained top, but Melbourne grabbed second from West Coast on both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS this week, as neither System found the Eagles' win over the Saints sufficiently convincing to justify their previous rating.

As we noted pre-round, interest this week was never going to be about the Head-to-Head Tipster race, which saw absolutely no change in the ordering with all but Home Sweet Home bagging 7 from 9 for the round.

If you've been troubled by the low scoring in much of this season, especially since Round 2, you'll not find much joy in this week's projected scoring.

We return to a full menu of nine games this weekend though a few of them look fairly unappetising, as conveyed by the all-game average expected margin this week, which has come in at 28.7 points per game. That's the highest single round average in the home and away season since Round 23 of 2016. 

Richmond and West Coast both did enough this weekend to hang onto their top rankings on MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, while Melbourne's big win over Adelaide convinced MoSHBODS that it should, like MoSSBODS, lift the Dees into third.

ENS_Linear snagged another seven this week, matching Bookie Knows Best and retaining its one tip lead on the Head-to-Head Tipster Leaderboard. It's now on 63.5 from 89 (71%).

The bookmakers are reasonably confident we'll see an average total score above 170 points per game this week, with five of the eight games expected by them to produce a total above that figure. The MoS twins are far less confident and see only three or four games producing or exceeding 170 points, and have an average for the round a point or two below that.