The West Coast Eagles are one of two AFL clubs based in Perth, Western Australia. The Eagles, who play in navy blue, white and gold, currently train and play their home games at Subiaco Oval. A move to the new 60,000 seated Perth Stadium is scheduled for 2018.

As part of an expansion of the VFL competition in 1986, along with the Brisbane Bears, the Eagles played their first seniors game in March 1987 – when they beat Richmond at Subiaco Oval by 14 points. The team made an impressive mark on the competition, finishing 4th on the ladder in 1988, in only their second year.

The 90s proved to be a successful decade for the West Coast Eagles under coach Mick Malthouse, claiming minor premiers in 1991, winning their first premiership in 1992 and again in 1994. They remained strong in the early 2000s, with Brownlow Medal winning effortts from Chris Judd in 2004 and Ben Cousins in 2006, before going on to win their 3rd premiership in 2006.

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The Essendon Football Club’s history dates back to 1872 when it was formed by the McCracken family, a well-known brewery family. Its traditional home of 90 years was based at Windy Hill, Essendon – home games were played there until 1991 and training/administration facilities until 2013, when a new centre was opened near Tullamarine. Essendon’s home games are held at either the MCG or Etihad Stadium. They boast an impressive 60,000 membership base.

The Bombers, as they are known, have won a remarkable 16 VFL/AFL premierships, the latest being in 2000 – the most titles held by any club, along with the Carlton Football Club. In 2005 the club missed their first finals season since 1997, and soon after their longest standing coach, Kevin Sheedy, left the club after 27 years and four premierships. Since 2013, the Essendon Football Club has been embroiled in illegal drug use allegations which has overshadowed their past three playing seasons.

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The North Melbourne Football Club is the fourth oldest club in the Australian Football League. The club was founded in 1869 and entered the VFL in 1925. Originally nicknamed the “Shinboners”; a term which dates back to the 19th-century and local abattoir-workers, they became known as ‘the Kangaroos’ in 1950.

North Melbourne’s traditional home ground is based on Arden Street in North Melbourne – their administration and training facilities remain there today with home matches now played at Etihad Stadium, Docklands.

The club has won four premierships, 1975, 77, 96, and 99. It’s most successful era being the 70s under the leadership of the AFL great Ron Barassi. The 90s were also strong for North Melbourne with Denis Pagan and Wayne Carey leading the club, they finished in the top four from 1994 through to 2000.

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The Sydney Swans Football Club was established as the South Melbourne Football Club in 1874. They are one of two teams in the AFL competition based in Sydney. Nicknamed the Swans due to an early influx of Western Australian players, the team moved in 1982 from its original home of 100 years in South Melbourne to Sydney. The move to Sydney was deemed necessary by club stalwarts and administrators due to the club’s flagging popularity and financial difficulties.

The Sydney Swans jumper is red and white with a profile of the Sydney Opera House on the front. They play the majority of their home games at the SCG, with blockbuster matches and derbies held at ANZ Stadium. The Club has won five premierships over the course of the League’s existence. With three coming early on in 1909, 1918 and 1933 before a drought of 72 years, the longest premiership drought of any club, when they reigned again in 2005 and 2012. Recent times have been successful for the Sydney Swans, only missing three finals series since 1995.

Sportsbet are offering the latest odds on Sydney Swans to win the Grand Final and Minor Premiership. Plus you can bet on Sydney Swans to win during every round of the AFL season on a huge range of markets including head to head, handicap line, total points and first Sydney Swans Goalscorer

The Hawthorn Football Club, nicknamed the Hawks, was established in 1902 and is one of the most successful Australian Rules Football clubs of the last 50 years. The youngest of the 10 Victorian-based AFL teams, the Hawks have won 12 premierships, 4 Brownlow Medals and 6 Norm Smith Medals. Their most successful period was the 1980s when they won 4 premierships and appeared in 7 consecutive grand finals. They play in brown and gold vertical stripes.

The Hawk’s roots are in the Inner-Eastern Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. Glenferrie Oval was their original home ground, along with their administrative, training and social club base. Following, they moved to Waverley Park where their administration and training facilities remain today. The Hawks current home ground is the MCG. Since 2007 The Hawks have played four of their home games each season in Launceston, Tasmania. This has strengthened the team’s supporter base and increased the profile of the AFL in Tasmania.

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We’ll be bringing you a closer look, over the next few weeks as the anticipation grows for the start of the season, at the men who are in the running for the Brownlow Medal – the guys who will be looking to follow Matthew Priddis into the record books. The man with the shortest odds would likely have to make extra room in the trophy cabinet – if Gary Ablett Jr. can claim another Brownlow Medal, it will be his third, which will equal the best effort of any AFL player in the history of the medal. A third Brownlow would make Ablett one of the modern greats – the last time a third Medal was picked up was back in the seventies!

So we’ll be taking a closer look at Ablett going into the 2015 season, to see if he’s going to offer value at $5.00 to make history, and also in the following weeks we’ll be looking at the men who will be thinking of denying him the pleasure. Plus we’ll have all the AFL odds and more, as usual…

The list of past Coleman Medal winners reads like a who’s who of AFL super-stars. Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin has three on his mantelpiece, and he’s the man with the shortest odds to win it in 2015, $4.25 as of right now. With this being one of the most interesting markets going for the coming AFL season (and one of our favourites to bet on and to keep track of, by the way), we’re going to be devoting some time and some space to looking at the key contenders in a bit more detail. And the 2015 season could be a compelling contest in store for the Coleman Medal, too. Before a ball has been kicked, there are three guys with odds shorter than $10 next to their names on Sportsbet. Franklin we’ve mentioned, but Roughead, Riewoldt and Kennedy aren’t going to let him just have it by any means!

So make sure you check back in with us over the next few weeks for all the usual AFL odds (which you can get just by hitting the link there), plus a closer look at those Coleman Medal contenders and more…

First up is arguably the most exciting of them, the medal that showcases the best and brightest young talent emerging onto the AFL scene: the players who will have to be taken into account in future seasons when you’re assessing those AFL odds, and whose coaches and teammates will be hoping can make immediate impact. A vintage rookie year is a difficult thing to put together, but the Rising Star medal recognises the players who manage it – and it can truly be a stepping stone to great things, both in their prospects and in their trophy cabinets.

Obviously it’s quite a difficult market to judge, the Rising Star, as, pretty much by definition, we haven’t seen all that much of these young guns before the start of the season. That’s where we have to rely a little bit on the buzz coming from the training camps, and gather all the info we can in advance of the season kicking off. We’ll be doing just that, and looking at the most exciting Rising Star prospects in closer detail in the coming days and weeks, so watch this space!

So today we’re talking about Steve Johnson, who emphatically will be appearing for the Cats in their 2015 campaign, even in spite of a potentially lucrative offer of a move to GWS in the off season. Rather brilliantly, we think, he happened to overlook the offer from the Giants whilst he was on holiday, but it sounds like he’s a committed Geelong man, and not out of loyalty alone, but because he’s in search of another flag win with them: ‘I really didn’t get a good chance to consider it because I was overseas on a golf trip and I think it was a day or two before the (trade) deadline finished. At the end of the day, my initial reaction was that I believed I had a really good opportunity to play in a premiership again next season at Geelong and that’s pretty much as far as I considered it. I was flattered by the offer from GWS to come up there for however long it was, but I’m certainly happy where I am at the moment. It probably wasn’t the time for me to really look at that sort of thing.’

What he will be looking at is getting himself ready for the new season, and that will mean managing his fitness quite carefully – especially a foot injury that is a risk of a recurrence, and that has been troubling him in recent weeks: ‘it was just a little bit of bone stress, it’s not even really stress. I had bone stress beforehand and it healed up pretty well over the off-season. I’ve been doing a lot of running (this pre-season) and I came in one morning and my foot was a tiny bit sore and they took the precautionary approach by saying ‘stay off it for a week’ and sent me to the Gold Coast.’

Which gives you an idea of how the management at Geelong are going to handle Johnson, who brings valuable experience to their roster, and who could be a key man in helping them overcome AFL odds of $14.00 to win the 2015 premiership. They’re going to handle him with lots of holidays, it sounds like. Nice work if you can get it…

The Power star is keeping things close to his chest, but the word is that he landed heavily on a knee in the course of training, and it could cause him some problems. The 21-year-old initially tried to shrug the injury off, it sounds like, but the decision was eventually taken to take the knife to it, and the surgery meant a few weeks without training. With such a precocious talent, you can understand the Port Adelaide management taking a cautious approach, and Wingard confirms that: ‘Round one is so far away and it’s really hard to know [whether I'll play]. There’s no time frame for my return. I’ll come back when it feels good. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later, but that’s all I can say at the moment. I’ve got to let it [the knee] rest and we’ve got no [return] goals yet.

So watch this space for more news and AFL odds as we get them – on that story and any others that catch our eye. We’ll send you off, though, with Wingard’s own closing line at the interview the quote above is lifted from – one that gives you an idea of just how routine it is for AFL players to put their bodies through the grinder for their clubs. Here’s how Wingard describes the surgery to his knee: ‘I just had a clean out to tidy the knee up.’ No big deal. Just a bit of knee surgery. All in a day’s work. We’re the same, of course…