Analysis The 2nd And 3rd Bananas Trap - A Guide To Refining Early Selections

It can be really tempting to by-pass the top dog in a team sometimes, in favour of the 2nd or 3rd banana, who is priced more attractively.
The question is, how viable is this?
Some teams, some Coaches, some game plans lend itself to this concept ok, but some shout "Don't go there!"

The tables below show the past 3 seasons for each team.
I've concentrated on the players that played 18 or more games in a particular season. In some cases, there weren't 3 players that played 18+ games on the one line for certain teams. It surprised me how often that happened. I've also in some cases included players that seem relevant, that didn't play 18+ games.

The idea of this thread is to possibly get you to think, when you're looking at that 2nd or 3rd banana, if it really is a good and viable idea.

Adelaide


Pretty big gaps across the board, from top dog to 2nd banana, except for the 2024 Mids and 2022 Fwds.
They were below a good level anyway!

Brisbane


Once again, the gaps from top to 2nd are pretty big, unless the scores are too low anyway.
The 2024 Mids might be an exception. There's a decent gap, but an argument could be made for Dunkley being a good pick.

Carlton


Once again, decent gaps and/or irrelevance prevail.
Cripps and Walsh borderline in 2022/24, but Walsh's game count counts heavily against him in 2024.

Collingwood


Look at those disappointing numbers! Apart from N Daicos they're pretty poor.
Is that Collingwood as a team, and their game plan?

Essendon


Another case of top dog or bust. Anyone who got close to the top dog failed the game count.

Fremantle

Finally a team with some useful 2nd bananas!!!
Mids 2023 and 2024, Defs 2024 Freo had 2 players high enough in the PIT60 averages* to make them both more than useful.

*To those unfamiliar with the term PIT60 average - It stands for "Place In Team" average, where the 60 means that every game a player missed, it is assumed his place in the team was replaced by a Rookie scoring 60.
For example: A player might have a 20/100 season, where he missed 3 games. While is season average remains at 100, his PIT60 average reduces to 94.8.

Geelong

Outside of Stewart, Geelong have been pretty irrelevant as far as Prems go.

Gold Coast

Gold Coast have only had 3 relevant players in the past 3 seasons. Usually their number 1 Mid has been worth considering, but outside of that, no Prems are even close to being pickable. Even then, there are some decent gaps from the disappointing top dogs, to the 2nd bananas.

GWS

GWS have a handful of relevant Prems over the past 3 seasons, but in each case there is a decent gap from top dog to second banana.

Hawthorn


On the rare occassions (3) Hawthorn have had relevant Prems, there have been large gaps back to the 2nd banana.

Melbourne

In 2022 Melbourne managed to have 2 relevant Mid Prems. In 2023 Oliver missed a large group of games. That season Petracca averaged roughly 124 without Oliver, and 115 with him.

North Melbourne


Only 3 relevant seasons (2 x Sheezel, 1 x LDU), but even in the non-relevant season there is mostly a decent gap from top dog to 2nd banana.

Port Adelaide

In 2022 where there is a small gap from top dog to 2nd banana the scores were too low to be SC relevant to the top SC Coaches.
In 2023 in the Fwds we have our first real exception to this exercise. Both Butters and Rozee were well into the top 6-8 Fwds that season.
In the other seasons it is business as usual with decent gaps or irrelevance.

Richmond

In 2023 Taranto was the 5th rated Fwd, with Bolton 10 points behind. Even though Bolton was 10 points behind, he wasn't far off the 8th rated Fwd. Outside of that, it is a largely a sea of irrelevance and/or gaps.

St Kilda

NWM was just below the top 10 last season, but still 9 behind Sinclair. The pattern of gaps and/or irrelevance largely continues.

Sydney

At last we have another solid exception. 2022 Sydney had 2 Fwds feature in the top 6 in the end of season summary.
We'll see later on, the 2022 Fwd summary (as well as the 2012 Mid summary and to a lesser extent, the 2014 Mid summary) are pretty big exceptions to the ideas I'm putting forward in this thread.

West Coast

2024 Defs McGovern and Yeo finished top 8 for averages, but well below that on the PIT60 table.

Western Bulldogs

What a whopping exception we have here! It really speaks to what I touched on at the start, about game plan and structure might throw up some exceptions. Look at those 2022 Fwd numbers ...... then look at those 2022 Mid numbers!!!! Pretty much every Bulldogs gun was Fwd eligible that season!!!! And we say Bevo does SC Coaches no favours! We see in 2023 they kept the party going in the midfield, and nearly repeated the dose in 2024.
This really is the exception to the rule. When you can identify a team structuring up like this, than have at it!!!!
More in the summary.

54 tables above.
8 strong exceptions
1 moderate exception
4 moderate exceptions.
As a general rule, trying to find two strongly SC relevant players from the same Club, on the same line, is a pretty poor play.
Looking at those strong exceptions, 2 of them occured in the Fwd line in 2022, where we had two clubs with very strong Mids classified as M/F that season.
The Bulldogs make up 3 of those 8 strong exceptions, and that says their game plan, and the way they structure is very SC friendly for their top players, and the rest struggle to score much that matters.
Does this mean you shouldn't take 2 from the same team, on the same line? No. What is does mean, is a couple of things though. If you are tossing up players A, B, C and D, and you already have someone on that line from one of those teams, you are probably better off eliminating that option, and narrowing your choice. Secondly, early in the season you should try and diverify, and get your Prems from a spread of teams. This not only should help your bye structure, but also means you don't have too many pigs feeding from the same trough.