Opinion 2024 AFL SuperCoach Planning Thread

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Hawks supporters I've seen don't have Hustwaite locked into the R1 team. May potentially be a sub. I was surprised because of how well he's gone in pre-season but I guess their midfield does have a few names to fit in (Newcombe, Nash, Worpel, Ward, Mackenzie, Maginness (if he tags)).
Hustwaite will be the first out once Will Day returns unfortunately…. Don’t think he has the job security to warrant paying for compared to others similarly priced…
 

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Melbourne supporters thoughts on christian salem? Playing pure midfield had 22 CBA, priced at 420k. Good thing is we get to have another look in round 0 hopefully with Oliver there.
Is there a significant positive correlation for Salem with increased midfield time? Can he register enough contested possessions and tackles to possibly compensate for decreased kicking efficiency, when moving up the ground? What do you envisage as the best case (or close to) scenario and how long could he sustain it for?
 
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I feel like judging the rebounding half back Zac Fisher via the, admittedly, very flaky forward Zac Fisher is a bad move.

No different to the likes of Ziebell, Baker, Houli (perhaps the best like for like), Lloyd, Coleman and oh so many others who don't score very well in other positions but that one perfectly suits them.

I get it, he was a squib at Carlton but he's had two 95+ games in the role for them last year and goes to a team that will see a LOT of ball down back and has produced in the first hitout.

Also, the forwards are so bloody awful this year.

Also, why not Fyfe and Fisher as F1 and F2 ;) What kind of hamstring related calf injury could possibly go wrong?
Thanks and welcome back. Expect you would be a good mentor in life, hence the enjoyment of writing these reviews, just a guess.

Was it the last 4 games he played for Carlton last year? noticed he had kick ins for two off those games.

Saints/GC - 126/96
Melb/GWS - 53/61

Saints and GC gave up decent scores to backlines I thought last year. Maybe once again today? Did bring him into my side today but after reviewing these numbers it is a pattern I dont like if it is correct he did the role over these 4 games. At least he has those two sides round 8/9.
 
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Is there a significant positive correlation for Salem with increased midfield time? Can he register enough contested possessions and tackles to possibly compensate for decreased kicking efficiency, when moving up the ground? What do you envisage as the best case (or close to) scenario and how long could he sustain it for?
They are missing a player with his sort of disposal in the midfield. Hes such a beautiful user. I think he will get more of the ball when oliver is around. If he could ave what he scored the other night(102) i think at 420k his worth considering.
 
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I really dont buy Holmes playing back, think hell get moved around, went back on ball as the game progressed and Geelong looked far more competitive in the middle.

Martin I'm personally not as convinced on as the majority, thought he was unreal but only walks off with a 109, with Ridley,Redman,McGrath and Heppell all also in the defence I'm struggling to see how hes consistently going 105+ to be a worthwhile pick.
Appreciate that (y)
 
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I haven't really looked at fantasy much this year however with round zero (what a fantastic idea from the AFL btw) being meaningless for fantasy, those teams having earlier byes, a good crop of midpricers and more trades, having cash in hand could be alright to bring in the premiums from some of these round zero sides that have another bye early.

Might already be the general consensuses, I only had a brief look and noticed Dacios with a round 5 bye could be someone to upgrade to after that with cash in hand for a pick that doesn't appear to be paying off as hoped. Again, haven't deep dived enough to know when the second byes are for these guys but just something that's been in my mind as I've tried to get into the swing of things again.

Loving how many options are on the board, should see some unique teams for the first 6 weeks before we finish the season with the same squads.
 
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Has there been much fixture difficulty analysis this year? Had a quick look and have seen a few articles but nothing that gave much indication one way or the other about teams with good/bad draws. Only thing I have noted is that St Kilda get hammered early on with short turn around times. Played NFL fantasy last couple of years and they do a lot of analysis on turn around between games and how it affects teams performance. Saints have a 5 day turn around in Rd 2 and then play 3 games in 12 days Rd 4 April 7 - Rd 6 Apr 18 with that Rd 6 game being another 5 day turn around. That won't help those players recovering from injuries and niggles.
 
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What does your def look like? Locking away 2 spots for blokes you hope get DPP AND breakout to 100+ could shut you out of some of the big boys who’ll undoubtedly separate themselves from the pack.
Wrote a bigger post on it but think this could be an old way of thinking that holds us back, we've got 20 more trades and boosts from when this was really relevant, even if you bring it more recent it's still a lot more trades and boosts. I found in RDT last year, where I actually picked a decent starting team, that I had trades to optimise positions after I'd finished an all premium 22 (technically was a 23 as had Sheezel to float back and forward). I expect it will be the same this year, perhaps even more so with many value players and even more trades.

I know I limited myself a fair bit with similar theory last year in SC that I can't pick too many on one line even if I was confident because I might miss changes. Ultimately if you think those guys getting DPP and the starters are 20 points underpriced, you should start them and deal with the too many options problem later.

Well, Rankine caught my attention. Anyone else taking the plunge.???
I'd say him and Flanders are the only two premiums I'm really strongly considering. Ultimately his durability issues are definitely a concern and I'm not sure we can't get similar upside with some of the cheaper guys. How good his role ends up is the real question, I think he's probably too good a forward at the end of the day.

Melbourne supporters thoughts on christian salem? Playing pure midfield had 22 CBA, priced at 420k. Good thing is we get to have another look in round 0 hopefully with Oliver there.
Not a Melbourne supporter but if he was playing midfield it would be a negative for me, they tried it a few years back and he really struggled with it and I just don't feel it suits him. He's great at working to space and then using the pill and being a wrap around option for weaker kickers. Neither of those roles are really needed in a midfield with a dominant ruck and three inside out bulls in Petracca, Oliver and Viney with Petracca also providing the wrap around option.

He's not a good tackler and not good in the contest and tends to hack kick under pressure which wrecks his DE% as well.

Basically it's a role that doesn't really suit him and harms a lot of his better skills. Not dissimilar to Short or how Simpson improved by moving to HB with a similar skillset.

It could work, but I'd rather him at HB. I actually think he's a very decent option at HB though with Brayshaw gone. Have to say that May has ruined him as a fantasy option for the most part though even in that role because he takes such a high percentage of the kick-ins away and that really hurts his floor.

Thanks and welcome back. Expect you would be a good mentor in life, hence the enjoyment of writing these reviews, just a guess.

Was it the last 4 games he played for Carlton last year? noticed he had kick ins for two off those games.

Saints/GC - 126/96
Melb/GWS - 53/61

Saints and GC gave up decent scores to backlines I thought last year. Maybe once again today? Did bring him into my side today but after reviewing these numbers it is a pattern I dont like if it is correct he did the role over these 4 games. At least he has those two sides round 8/9.
Haha I'd be a good mentor for a life of debauchery :LOL:

Yeah was the last 4, he did end up going forward in the last game as well. Worth noting that the Blues are a lot better side and that they had Newman, Docherty, Saad and McGovern all sharing the load a bit (Newman hogging it mostly). Even the bad game he played in defense he actually had 20 odd touches.

To be fair, wouldn't be surprised if he dishes out some of those 60 type scores, Sheezel and McKercher will both have big games and Sheezel will be the main option but he's going to get good supply levels and he will also have the 120+ scores as well to balance them out.

He's not a perfect option but I feel confident that if he plays the role and stays fit, he's going to be in the region of F6.

I haven't really looked at fantasy much this year however with round zero (what a fantastic idea from the AFL btw) being meaningless for fantasy, those teams having earlier byes, a good crop of midpricers and more trades, having cash in hand could be alright to bring in the premiums from some of these round zero sides that have another bye early.

Might already be the general consensuses, I only had a brief look and noticed Dacios with a round 5 bye could be someone to upgrade to after that with cash in hand for a pick that doesn't appear to be paying off as hoped. Again, haven't deep dived enough to know when the second byes are for these guys but just something that's been in my mind as I've tried to get into the swing of things again.

Loving how many options are on the board, should see some unique teams for the first 6 weeks before we finish the season with the same squads.
Daicos in particular I would guess most are looking at for defensive and value reasons. You've got the injury game, which to be fair was on target for a mare anyway, another injury against Adelaide that he played through and multiple hard tags. He should start to handle tags better this year, assuming they come as frequently, so there's a pretty good case for value. He's also entering his 3rd season so even natural progression is very arguable. It's crazy to think a guy averaging 117 has significant upside but I definitely think it's the case for him.

There's also how he started last year, if you didn't have him until round 6, your season was already over.

There's also just his sheer popularity. If he does improve and any of the above ends up correct, you're going to have to pay even more to get him and leak a lot of points. There's not often a very good case for the top player on any line being genuinely underpriced like he has.

Ultimately, any cash in hand isn't generating points and getting behind the 8 ball to avoid a bye that could end up costing very little could be an even bigger cost.

I do think you need a strong upside case to justify picking a bye player. Personally I think Daicos, Heeney, Flanders, Touk, Gulden, Grundy, Gawn, Himmelberg, Newman and probably a couple of others are the main names that stand out as guys you can make good cases for starting despite the bye.

Think this is a strong upside year though, lot of guys falling into the value category floating around, wouldn't surprise me if 4 or 5 guys in the 200-375k range end up at premium levels in the forwards, there's probably a solid half dozen keepers in the 400s in the mids (not as mids) and backs as well. Someone is going to probably nail the majority of those groups.
 
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I haven't really looked at fantasy much this year however with round zero (what a fantastic idea from the AFL btw) being meaningless for fantasy, those teams having earlier byes, a good crop of midpricers and more trades, having cash in hand could be alright to bring in the premiums from some of these round zero sides that have another bye early.

Might already be the general consensuses, I only had a brief look and noticed Dacios with a round 5 bye could be someone to upgrade to after that with cash in hand for a pick that doesn't appear to be paying off as hoped. Again, haven't deep dived enough to know when the second byes are for these guys but just something that's been in my mind as I've tried to get into the swing of things again.

Loving how many options are on the board, should see some unique teams for the first 6 weeks before we finish the season with the same squads.
Unfortunately round 0 is far from meaningless. Apart from considering the early byes and one less fantasy game for us, I'm assuming there's still the other impact of the round 0 score still affecting a players rolling average and first brrakeven.

Once we actually see these scores it's either going to be a snap reaction to dropping a player we were set on, or a big score influencing people selecting certain players. Those disregarding Daicos for example might jump on if he gets a 160, and those set on daicos may move him out if he get a poor score.
 
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Hehe - I hope the little one is on the mend, that is never good for anyone!

I am enjoying our discussion as well. I think there is a bit to work through this preseason, and am hoping we can collectively nut a lot of it out before lockout.

A few thoughts:

- I’m not sure about midpricers needing to score more on a $ per point basis. A 120k rookie that averages 60 is a good pick. That would suggest that the bar for a 360k midpricer was an average of 180. I think the $ cash generation (and the pace of it, as you mention) is a better measure. My preference would be to select everyone that I think will make me 150k, regardless of their initial price.

- The idea about the number of “outs” from a midpricer is interesting and one I may need to think more about. I do think that the hit rate on midpricers has been low historically, although one factor driving this (in my mind) is that we have asked a lot of them because they do chew up scarce trades in a way that GnR doesn’t. Whether midpricers still have a lower success rate than rookies with the extra trades available, I’m less sure.

- A related point that Jackson Davey (the presenter of the YouTube video I posted earlier) made is that a big advantage of a value based approach is that it takes the worst rookies off the field. Often those rookies are quite poor scorers or have JS issues etc. Starting with 12 premos in a GnR setup implies 18 rookies, and often that 18th rookie isn’t great. If we allow ourselves to incorporate midpricers, our 1st midpricer is likely to be a much better pick than our 18th rookie (even after adjusting for the price difference). The 2nd midpricer may be better than the 17th rookie, and so on. Clearly this doesn’t go on forever, but it is an interesting way to think about it.

- I agree that boosts are very valuable, but I reckon there will be a lot of rounds where it’s not obvious what we would use that extra trade for to justify its cost. Ie often 2 trades per round is about the right amount, perhaps because it facilitates a one up, one down. I also agree that boosts should be used early.

- I’m more comfortable taking R0 players than pretty much anyone else, from what I can see. I thought JD made an interesting point on this. We’ll see whether this ends up being the right call or not.

- It’s a good question re whether I would still take English with a MPM team. I think the answer is yes, but it’s probably hard to know for sure. I was pretty convinced that he offered a good risk/reward trade off, which means I would have been inclined to fit him in, and it was the extra trades that made me pretty high conviction on actually taking him … his main downside risk was mitigated by the extra “outs” from increased trades. Interestingly I am unsure who the English of this year is … he’s not jumping out at me at this point!

I think we may have discussed a few weeks ago that I was keen to employ a more value oriented approach - but was struggling to actually identify which of those players I wanted to pick, given that the midpricers looked poor and the rookies looked good. It now seems that the rookies still look good but the midpricers look a lot better. That probably opens up the potential for me to use that value based approach again, but I need to weigh up whether the midpricers look good enough to pick them over the rookies … or perhaps more accurately, whether the merits of those individual selections warrant selecting a team in the structure that I think the rules are most suited to this year.

At a minimum, I’m happy that the midpricers are looking a bit better, so I at least have two viable options to consider!
Yeah he’s much better now. Back to tearing the house apart which is always a great sign!
The whole round 0 thing has opened up a lot of new possibilities which makes for some new strategy discussions, we haven’t been able to do that for a while!

1. The point here is that to select a $350k player (randomly picked number) over a $150k rookie, you need to take $200k from another selection - so it’s probably more looking at this in totality. 4 $350k picks needs to collectively outscore 2 premiums and 2 rookies. Which should happen but if the bottom 2 MP players are scoring close to rookie level, it can be a close thing.

2. I agree that the bar for success is lower (it almost needed to be they were a keeper to be a good pick!) as the only need to score well or make cash and they can be traded on. There is also a stronger saturation of coverage that helps identify the stronger prospects. I’m definitely not saying MP = bad, but more so lots of MP = risky, and the risk only grows exponentially the more you add in. I for example, I think someone like Jordon is a no brainer, and the risk is much much lower given he is only slightly more than a rookie, and the requirements for him to grow in value are much lower. In contrast, Fyfe I see as extremely risky given his injury history. They are the same price, but starting just Jordon is very different to starting Jordon and Fyfe. Not to say that’s a bad move (I have both in my most recent team version) but it’s riskier. I am pre committing a trade on Fyfe with no idea when it’ll be needed and how that will derail other plans. Similar with Jordon but he is more “likely” to land in a planned window.

3. That video was super interesting! I agree with a lot of what he’s saying, with one caveat. He is talking from the position you got the MP picks right AND rookies right (eg, you didn’t pick the worst ones and instead had a MP). In that scenario absolutely, but how often do we nail every single rookie? And every MP? Which sort of comes back to my central point of risk, the more MP you have the more likely it is you started a dud, and the less rookies you start the more likely it is you missed one. Even one you liked but just didn’t have the room. Maybe it’s a function of perspective, but I’m looking at things in a “if it goes badly is my season over?” mindset, and that’s where the risk factor plays in.
You need to take risks, and risk isn’t bad.. it’s just finding the line of acceptable risk.

4. This is probably one I’m on my island on, but I think boosts will be one of the big difference factors this season. With a number of teams having 3-4 price rises a game earlier than normal, there is a big opportunity to get upgrading early (I think JD made this point) but there could be a big different in upgrade quality. The boosts are not only valuable for the weeks there are 3 quality rookies on the bubble, but also in the ability to unlock more cash for the upgrade. Given the early upgrades will likely be culling rookies who haven’t quite peaked, boosts will be key. I think using too many on early corrections will really put teams behind as they’re limited in upgrades when they can only use 2 trades.

5. This is one where I think we agree, I’m surprised at how many are writing off R0 players altogether or really limiting them. Best 18 really changes the game there, and I think the impact will be less than that of missing a great starting pick/value pick. Too many us also an issue, but don’t miss a good pick because of the early bye.

Value is different a huge component, but I think where I sit is that while each player makes sense in isolation, what’s the cumulative effect of having them all? Is there an exit strategy or is it season done if it doesn’t pay off? Is having 1 less premium to accomodate them a net win or an overall loss?
It’s a hard one to answer until we see the scores coming in, but it’s an interesting one.

FWIW I’m currently having my first look at a Fisher F1/sub $300k for the rest forward line, which a few weeks ago would have seemed likely the height of madness. Still not sold, but can see the appeal..
 
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SEN just had Sam Mitchell on and spoke about Finn McGinness, pretty much what we knew but said he's one dimensional player, tried him in a few roles but will play when there's a role for him as a tagger.

So which games do we think and who early?

Round#1 Essendon (Merrett/Martin)
Round#2 Melbourne (Oliver)
Round#4 Collingwood (Daicos)
Round#5 GCS (Miller)
Round#6 NM (Sheezel
Round#7 Sydney (Gulden)
Round#8 WB (Libba)
 
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What does your def look like? Locking away 2 spots for blokes you hope get DPP AND breakout to 100+ could shut you out of some of the big boys who’ll undoubtedly separate themselves from the pack.
I reckon this is where we have more limited and low scoring rooks.

I myself are loading up in def and ignoring Williams as want to see him play at least a couple of games, see how body is holding up. With early bye and more trades be an easy get if starts on 🔥 after rd 3.
 

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I myself are loading up in def and ignoring Williams as want to see him play at least a couple of games, see how body is holding up. With early bye and more trades be an easy get if starts on 🔥 after rd 3.
But is it worth wasting two trades on, rather than one, for perceived reassurance that he is fine? What scoring level determines whether we should jump on and what is the exit plan if he is injured immediately after his inclusion or in the early rounds. What is the worst case scenario of starting Williams and does this greatly impact the spend on other lines? Do we leave enough cash in reserve to fix a rookie for Williams on the bubble or will a failed mid priced selection make way?
 
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SEN just had Sam Mitchell on and spoke about Finn McGinness, pretty much what we knew but said he's one dimensional player, tried him in a few roles but will play when there's a role for him as a tagger.

So which games do we think and who early?

Round#1 Essendon (Merrett/Martin)
Round#4 Collingwood (Daicos)
Round#5 GCS (Miller)
Round#6 NM (Sheezel
Round#7 Sydney (Gulden)
I don’t think he plays every week as I reckon the hawks will want to use those minutes developing their young mids, but if he does play I’d say the risk players are:

R1: Merret
R2: Oliver
R3: Probably doesn’t play as no real need to tag
R4: Daicos
R5: I actually think Anderson or Rowell
R6: LDU
R7: Gulden
R8: Libba

But I genuinely don’t think he plays every one of those games.
 
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