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

2022 Forwards - The year of Bulldogs/Swans Forward line.

In 2022 we had the ridiculous situation where you could have had a very competitive Fwd line filled with 6 Bulldogs players, and a better Fwd line than probably 95+% of Coaches with just Bulldogs and Sydney players!!!



The Bulldogs had the top 4 Fwd averages for the season, and 6 of the top 10. Sydney supplied the 5th and 8th best average. Even when you notice that English and Smith missed a chunk of games, the Bulldogs still had 6 of the top 19 PIT60 averages for the season.
The total points by the top 20 PIT60 aggregate players was 42,389. The six Bulldog players PIT60 aggregated 13,211. That's 31.16% of the points scored by the top 20 players, scored by one team!!!!

2012 Mids - The Collingwood/Richmond Exception


In 2012 Collingwood had 3 of the top 4 averaging Mids (with Sidebottom coming in 24th), and Richmond had 9th-11th averaging Mids.
On the PIT60 average table they still held up, with the Collingwood players finishing 4th, 9th and 10th (Sidebottom 19th). The Richmond players finishing 6th-8th.

2014 Collingwood Mids

In 2014 Collingwood had:
Pendlebury 21/124
Beams 19/115
Sidebottom 19/113
They finished 3rd, 6th and 8th on the average table, and 1st, =12th, and 16th on the PIT60 table.

There will always be exceptions to this popping up. The hard part is identifying the exceptions before they happen. With the Bulldogs Forwards in 2022 it was probably hard not to end up with 3 (or more) of them in your team.
The thing is that most of us, myself included, sometimes complicate the process of putting a team together more than we need to. While it isn't always easy to identify the Top Dogs on every line in every team, if you can't start by doing that for the relevant teams/players you'll be surprised how much that can narrow your choices down. Removing those 2nd and 3rd Bananas leaves you fewer players to choose from, leading hopefully to less regrettable decisions being made.
Keep in mind, that some of the exceptions mentioned in the first 19 posts involved one player near the top of the list for that line, and one player just outside the top 6-10 players. It's really important to avoid selecting Keepers at the start, or early in the season, that you think will end up filling D5/6, M7/8 and F5/6. There are two very good reasons you should avoid doing this! Firstly, when you select a Keeper you hope will fill a higher position (D1/3, M1/4, F1/3) the lower positions on those lines are your safety net. A failed M3 selection that falls to fill your M7/8 position has at least filled one of your finalised team's spots. There is nothing more disappointing than your team ending up with 3-4 M7/8 type players, because you will be giving up pretty hefty points across a number of rounds, to Coaches that have "proper" M4-6's. A failed M7/8 selection has nowhere to fall to, but hopefully a looping position at M9. Early in the season, and in your starting team, you need as much room for error as possible, so don't pick Keepers to fill those lower positions early in the season!!! The second reason not to grab those lower expectation players early is, they are quite often the ones you can pick up at bargain prices mid season. Why over pay for a player to fill a lower position?!

Rankine is 10 under and probably just wrong key.
You have doubled up and put in St Kilda mids for Sydney 2024 and thank you for all the data posted.

Thanks for that, I'll get that fixed. Template problem.

Thanks again, fixed.

Fantastic work Row. Very interesting stuff.

One thing I’m thinking about is, in acknowledging that we probably shouldn’t include (just as an example) a second Freo mid, what is the best approach to gauging whether we should keep last year’s top dog, versus betting on the second (or later) banana to improve and take on that mantle in 2025? That second banana obviously has great value priced in, if there is a changing of the guard.

Maybe that’s too different a question for these tables to answer directly, and we need to answer it using the usual considerations - but the tables tell us that it’s a question we need to focus on, and narrowing it down to just two candidates (previous top dog, and candidate to take that mantle) might be a wise approach.

Much to think about!

This This has brisbane 2023 defs Rowan.
Damn cut and paste😳

It depends a lot on expectations for the two top bananas, but it does open up the possibility of playing the combined average game early while you try to figure it out.
If you think one will go 115 and the other 105 but you can’t decide which way to go, you could start both banking on a 110 average across the 2, with a view to upgrade the 105 performer where you can.
Very much team and situation dependant but it does lessen the risk of taking the wrong one!

Is the data better represented where the players actually played during the season not their SC position?

I’ll use Freo as an example, Young wasn’t the third banana in defence and Sharp wasn’t the third banana in the midfield playing exclusively on the wing. All of Freo’s mids scored well if you use Young as the third banana but Sharp brings it down a considerable amount.

2 corrections made.
Thanks @Diabolical, @blue dreamer

Thanks for the feedback.
I'm pretty happy that it needs to refer to the positions they were available to be selected in, otherwise in SC terms, it doesn't represent the picture that was available at that time.
The 2nd and 3rd banana doesn't refer to role, but their place amongst the team and line's top scorers, concentrated on players that played 18+ games.