Note: these predictions were made after the conclusion of round 1. Make of that what you will, but there was no funny business involved!

To kick this season off, I’ve used the team abilities from my model after the finish of the home and away matches in 2020 to create prior distributions for the 2020 season. To refresh your memory, here’s a description of how my model works.

The figure below shows how the model had the teams after the end of home and away matches in 2020.

Predictions for the first round are given in the table below. The priors for these distributions are based purely on the final abilities from last season and do not account for any roster changes in the teams. Furthermore, the model uses score differentials to make predictions, so it will take a few rounds for the model to calibrate.

Home	Away	Chance of home team winning
Melbourne Vixens	West Coast Fever	31%
Collingwood Magpies	Sunshine Coast Lightning	5%
Queensland Firebirds	NSW Swifts	35%
Adelaide Thunderbirds	GIANTS Netball	37%

Score Differential Distributions

The distribution of the predicted score differentials is shown in the figures below. For each game, the chance of the home team winning is calculated and shown in the figure title. Each distribution is coloured by the team’s colours, and the more of a single team’s colour, the higher the chance that team has of winning. Overlaid on each figure are two vertical, dashed dark green lines; these show the score differential that has a 50% predicted chance of happening.