Quote Originally Posted by bloodspirit View Post
One thing that strikes me is that "interstate" teams (i.e. non VFL) seem to have a bigger gap between their home and away free kick averages than the Melbourne teams overall. The WA teams and Port in particular do, us to a fair extent too, but GWS, Adelaide and Qld teams not so much. To me this lends credence to the 'sound of acclamation' or crowd noise theory - particularly when you factor in that the expansion teams and Brisbane don't get such great home support. Doesn't account for Adelaide though. Collingwood seem to have the smallest difference between home and away averages and perhaps this is due to the vocal and strong support they get from their dedicated fans even when they're away from home.
Yes, Adelaide is interesting. One issue is the definition of home and away; a Melbourne-based team can be away in Melbourne, so very little travel and probably still plenty of "home" fans.

We could look at venue, or city, but obviously that increases the number of comparisons and makes things more complicated. Perhaps it would be interesting to redefine home and away, based on whether a team is in their home city or not. But there are always going to be "edge cases", like GWS "home" games in Canberra, or North Melbourne "home" games in Tasmania.