The winless North Melbourne Kangaroos will travel to the University of Tasmania Stadium in Launceston on Saturday to take on the Hawthorn Hawks. As usual, PuntingInDanger has his full preview and betting tips for the clash below.
AFL Hawthorn vs North Melbourne Betting Tips
UTAS Stadium, Saturday 15th May 2.10pm (AEST)
The Hawks and Roos are the bottom two teams in the competition, so not a whole lot will be on the line come Saturday outside of pride and desperation to avoid the wooden spoon.
Match Prediction
This might just be it for the Roos for a while. After choking away winnable games against the Demons and Magpies over the last few weeks, the Roos now have a great opportunity to finally secure their first win of the season against a struggling Hawks side. After this clash, they have games against Essendon, St Kilda, GWS and Brisbane over the next month, so wins might be hard to come by. They have been pretty gallant of late to no avail, particularly in their game against the Demons, where they led into the third quarter.
The Hawks had a win over the Crows in one of the games of the season a few weeks ago but have since lost games to the Saints by 69 and the Eagles by 38 points. Tom Mitchell continues to rack up big numbers and had another 41 touches in the loss on the weekend.
The Hawks are pretty ravaged on the injury front. Jack Gunston was a late withdrawal on the weekend with back spasms, while they could be without Jaeger O’Meara and Shaun Burgoyne for this clash along with the continued absence of James Sicily. The Roos have the worst injury list in the league bar none. They are without Jed Anderson, Aidan Bonar, Aidon Corr, Kyron Hayden, Luke McDonald, Jared Polec, Robbie Tarrant and Dom Tyson, while star recruit Jaidyn Stephenson was the latest casualty with a broken wrist.
What a tough game to call between two teams that are really struggling at the moment. The Hawks start as 17.5 point favourites here but it’s pretty hard to bet on them to win any game against any opponent by 20+. History between these two teams shouldn’t play much of a factor here as both teams have so many injuries that it will basically be two unfamiliar teams lining up on Saturday.
Can see the Roos getting out to a decent start like they have in the last few weeks but the Hawks pegging them back slowly. The ‘any other result’ in the wire to wire market looks good value here in a game that should be pretty close.
W2W - Any Other Result (1.5 Units)
$2.20
Hawks Prop
I don’t really like much about this game at all so I’m just hunting a bit of blind value in the Hawks prop bet here. With Jack Gunston in a bit of doubt with a back issue and Luke Breust in some horror form at the moment, the Hawks are hunting a semi-consistent goal scorer. Jacob Koschitzke has shown some glimpses this season, including a bag of five against the Crows in Round 6. Back him for 3+ in a game where he should get plenty of supply.
Koschitzke 3+ Goals
$3.40
Kangaroos Prop
Cameron Zurhaar had his first game with multiple goals this season in the loss to the Pies on the weekend, kicking two goals on the back of four total scoring shots. The damaging forward hasn’t been terrible in 2021 so far, but he’s just had zero supply from a midfield that has been dominated week in week out. The Roos should be more competitive this week so $3.40 for Zurhaar to boot 2+ seems value.
