Australian Football Association of North America

by Johnson Leung reporting for AFANA in Melbourne

American Singer Kelly Clarkson and  Melbourne university lecturer Anthony Bedford have both tipped Geelong to win this year's AFL Grand Final.

A huge sports fan, Clarkson performed at Channel Nine's Footy Show Grand Final Spectacular at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena on Thursday. She arrived in Australia earlier this week to promote her new album My December. During her visit she will also perform at the Australian Idol Verdict Show at Sydney's Fox Studios on October 1.

"I'm really into football in America so I asked to be updated when I got here," Clarkson said on Wednesday. "I heard Geelong haven't won in 44 years. They're the major underdogs and I always go for the underdog. I sang for the (baseball) World Series back home, the Boston Red Sox were playing and they hadn't won forever and they ended up winning that year. I hope I'm good luck."

Clarkson has sold 16 million albums since she won the first American Idol in 2002 and, despite controversy over reported battles with her record company, her third album My December has already sold a million copies internationally. First single from the album, Never Again, has been a big hit in Australia.

Meanwhile, Bedford, Lecturer of the School of Mathematics and Geospatial Sciences at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, has used his supercomputer to predict that the Cats will take an 18-point home ground advantage into the GF and will win by between 30 and 42 points.

Dr Bedford's supercomputer forecast a Geelong-Port Grand Final in Round 18. The mainframe has a solid record in predicting winners: it forecast three out of the past four premiership winners and got within 18 points of the winning margin each time.

Sources: Herald Sun, MX