Strategy 2023 Season review
- Thread starter Darkie
- Start date
Scored 2,708, finished 128th overall and won the SCS01 GF.
Lost my cash league (Bont C over English would have got me over the line!)
Thanks everyone for an awesome year! See you all in the preseason!
Edit: Posting my starting and final teams:
Starting Team:
Dawson, Stewart, Clark, Ginbey, McKenna, Constable (Cowan, Wilmot)
Laird, Oliver, Bontempelli, Green, Hopper, Callaghan, Ashcroft, Mackenzie (Hollands, Chesser, Baker)
English, Marshall (Madden)
Dunkley, Rozee, Taranto, Bruhn, Flanders, Sheezel (Davey, Greene)
Final Team:
Dawson, Stewart, Sheezel, Houston, Ryan, Redman (Constable, Melican)
Laird, Bontempelli, Petracca, Merrett, Brayshaw, Neale, Anderson, Steele (Humphrey, Hewett, Sharp)
English, Marshall (Madden)
Butters, Jackson, Gulden, Rozee, Taranto, Coniglio (Maric, Roberts)
Lost my cash league (Bont C over English would have got me over the line!)
Thanks everyone for an awesome year! See you all in the preseason!
Edit: Posting my starting and final teams:
Starting Team:
Dawson, Stewart, Clark, Ginbey, McKenna, Constable (Cowan, Wilmot)
Laird, Oliver, Bontempelli, Green, Hopper, Callaghan, Ashcroft, Mackenzie (Hollands, Chesser, Baker)
English, Marshall (Madden)
Dunkley, Rozee, Taranto, Bruhn, Flanders, Sheezel (Davey, Greene)
Final Team:
Dawson, Stewart, Sheezel, Houston, Ryan, Redman (Constable, Melican)
Laird, Bontempelli, Petracca, Merrett, Brayshaw, Neale, Anderson, Steele (Humphrey, Hewett, Sharp)
English, Marshall (Madden)
Butters, Jackson, Gulden, Rozee, Taranto, Coniglio (Maric, Roberts)
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- Joined
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I've been keeping an eye over the scoring power of the winning SC team over the past few years.
(@Wheedus has posted along ths line in earlier years)
This little table shows the respective winner's average score per player, per round - across the last 3 seasons.
I havent got exact data on how well the champs have gone with their captain selections so I have allowed for 3 scenarios.
ie. average captain scores of 125, 135 & 140 pts per round.
As you can see the standard is getting a little better over time, perhaps there is a marginal inflator this year because of the extra round.
We all know how tough it is to stay up with the leading group - to get there we have to target something close to 105 ppg.
Btw the average obviously rises within the season - when I ran the figures on the 2023 progressive leader as at R15, the average numbers were roughly 3 pts less at that stage.
(@Wheedus has posted along ths line in earlier years)
This little table shows the respective winner's average score per player, per round - across the last 3 seasons.
I havent got exact data on how well the champs have gone with their captain selections so I have allowed for 3 scenarios.
ie. average captain scores of 125, 135 & 140 pts per round.
As you can see the standard is getting a little better over time, perhaps there is a marginal inflator this year because of the extra round.
We all know how tough it is to stay up with the leading group - to get there we have to target something close to 105 ppg.
Btw the average obviously rises within the season - when I ran the figures on the 2023 progressive leader as at R15, the average numbers were roughly 3 pts less at that stage.
- Joined
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Wonder if we can get an AA thread:
teams based upon the AA squad, I'm sure there will be those who we think should be there but aren't...
Sicily, Andrews, Stewart
Houston, Weitering, Sinclair
Daicos, Bont (C), Gulden
Petracca, Curnow, Greene
Cameron, Larkey, Daniher (R/F)
English, Libba, Merrett
Bench: Dawson, Green, Butters, Ryan.
Sub: Serong
(Emg: Marshall, Bruest, Neale)
I hate that I have to Daniher in as R/F. The best teams run a dominant ruck, so unless someone can help out with alternate, I'm stuck with the missed shot of the year in my AA team, somwthing which should rule a player out. (Marshall played ruck not forward, so he loses out altogether to English)
Thoughts?
teams based upon the AA squad, I'm sure there will be those who we think should be there but aren't...
Sicily, Andrews, Stewart
Houston, Weitering, Sinclair
Daicos, Bont (C), Gulden
Petracca, Curnow, Greene
Cameron, Larkey, Daniher (R/F)
English, Libba, Merrett
Bench: Dawson, Green, Butters, Ryan.
Sub: Serong
(Emg: Marshall, Bruest, Neale)
I hate that I have to Daniher in as R/F. The best teams run a dominant ruck, so unless someone can help out with alternate, I'm stuck with the missed shot of the year in my AA team, somwthing which should rule a player out. (Marshall played ruck not forward, so he loses out altogether to English)
Thoughts?
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- Joined
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Finished the season ranked 3,146th.
Not the most enjoyable of seasons mainly due to a poor starting team consisting of too many mid priced players after last year's success with this tactic. My round 1 team had all of Bruhn, Flanders and Worpel who were disappointing even though two of them ended up finishing in the best money makers of the year, but too little too late. A few 50/50 pre season choices were a let down having English and Dawson for the most of it but settling on S.Darcy and Doch after preseason games. Those two choices alone were probably the difference between my final rank and a top 1k rank.
Season started poorly with Stewart getting injured in the 2nd game of the season and finished in the same manner having to hold Ridley on the bench for the last 5 weeks. Will be aiming to have a 23rd premo as cover next year as it was a tactic that worked well this season for me rather than trying to upgrade my worst player. Too often form can turn around and a 23rd premo is fielded due to injuries/resting/suspensions. Will also look to reduce the amount of midpricers i start with assuming rookies show rd 1. Midpricers were the way to go in 2022 but historically they haven't been so need to find a good balance. Need to also consider the age of my starting picks and trade ins. For example i had a choice of Mitchell and Serong for Oliver at his bye after holding for about a month and chose the option who had the most history in Mitchell while Serong seemed to be playing through an injury. Lost 200-300 odd points on the choice alone and it came down to Mitchell being managed as the season wore on while his side was comfortably locked into finals.
Looking forward to next year already. There will be a bunch of mid premos to choose from. I think all of Bont, Oliver, LDU, Brayshaw, Parish, Walsh, Miller & T.Green will feature heavily plus those who have lost dpp like Dunk, Dawson & Butters. There should be some decent defence value but the top liners who have the more solid roles will be hard to look past with the way SuperCoach is heavily skewed towards long kicks and efficiency these days. Rucks will be dependent on the trade period with all of Grundy, Gawn, Jackson and S.Darcy potentially being very relevant dependent on player movement. Forwards i don't want to think about and i'm hoping rookies show or there could be alot of mid price punt picks.
Not the most enjoyable of seasons mainly due to a poor starting team consisting of too many mid priced players after last year's success with this tactic. My round 1 team had all of Bruhn, Flanders and Worpel who were disappointing even though two of them ended up finishing in the best money makers of the year, but too little too late. A few 50/50 pre season choices were a let down having English and Dawson for the most of it but settling on S.Darcy and Doch after preseason games. Those two choices alone were probably the difference between my final rank and a top 1k rank.
Season started poorly with Stewart getting injured in the 2nd game of the season and finished in the same manner having to hold Ridley on the bench for the last 5 weeks. Will be aiming to have a 23rd premo as cover next year as it was a tactic that worked well this season for me rather than trying to upgrade my worst player. Too often form can turn around and a 23rd premo is fielded due to injuries/resting/suspensions. Will also look to reduce the amount of midpricers i start with assuming rookies show rd 1. Midpricers were the way to go in 2022 but historically they haven't been so need to find a good balance. Need to also consider the age of my starting picks and trade ins. For example i had a choice of Mitchell and Serong for Oliver at his bye after holding for about a month and chose the option who had the most history in Mitchell while Serong seemed to be playing through an injury. Lost 200-300 odd points on the choice alone and it came down to Mitchell being managed as the season wore on while his side was comfortably locked into finals.
Looking forward to next year already. There will be a bunch of mid premos to choose from. I think all of Bont, Oliver, LDU, Brayshaw, Parish, Walsh, Miller & T.Green will feature heavily plus those who have lost dpp like Dunk, Dawson & Butters. There should be some decent defence value but the top liners who have the more solid roles will be hard to look past with the way SuperCoach is heavily skewed towards long kicks and efficiency these days. Rucks will be dependent on the trade period with all of Grundy, Gawn, Jackson and S.Darcy potentially being very relevant dependent on player movement. Forwards i don't want to think about and i'm hoping rookies show or there could be alot of mid price punt picks.
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I finished at # 12735
I was bouncing around in the 20,000 - 35,000 range up until about R15 by whch time I was about 15,000th and I obviously made a little further headway in the run home.
I have regularly been inside the top 10K, so this season goes down a quite a disappointment.
I'm finding it fairly difficult to pinpoint the reason(s) for my lacklustre showing especially when I consider these key factors..
1 - I dont feel like I was as badly hit on the injury front as many others in the SCS community. In other years I've thought I copped more than my fair share, but that won't wash (with me anyway) this time.
2 - When I look back at my starting line-up, it seems that I did quite a lot right. This table shows my squads as at R1, at R3 after some corrective trades & before price changes and my final team. The black outline-boxing highlights those players I held all the way thru.
Nevertheless I obviously managed to do a lot of dumb things as I finished up a whopping 3,338 points behind Oozin Sauce.
.. in hindsight I was almost dead in the water really early in the year.
I may be wrong, but I feel like you can have a slow start and then make up quite a lot of ground in the rankings, but I reckon it's much harder to make up points on the leading coaches - of course that may just be my experience
.
This table reveals how quickly I feel off the pace.
It records the points deficit (in increments of 500) and the round I first fell that far behind the progressive leader.
These figures suggest my biggest mistakes (or biggest hits) must have been made fairly early in the season - even though I seem to have picked a pretty decent starting squad.
There are probably too many to bother trying to pin them all down, but I think these are part of the puzzle.
1 - I made Sean Darcy captain in R2 and he produced an all-time, injury-free score of 41 I rage-traded him to English and I suppose that wasnt a bad eventuality, but Darcy averaged over 125 for the next 7 weeks. Just maddening & damaging.
2 - Coming into R4, I traded in Amartey and Rowston - ouch!
3 - Coming into R5, I was tossing up all week between Kozzy Pickett (who'd scored 144 - - 89) and Mitch Owens(76 97 76 143) They were both about $360K at that stage and I went disastrously wrong with KP. Over the next 2 rounds Kozzy produced scores of 61 & 16 when I duly offloaded him. Naturally he rebounded 121 & 74, but his price barely moved across those 4 rounds. In contrast, in that period Owens averaged 95 and made $125K
4 - Holding Constable all the way - gained me nothing. Probably holding Madden as a Ruck FD was reasonable, but two FD's is one too many.
Later on I made more questionable trade-ins such a s Fyfe & Yeo, but when you are way behind, you probably go for long-shot moves that may yield a big pay-off. I also picked up Steele and Mills when they were cheaper than expected, but their output was patchy at best.
There's plenty of time to reflect & analyse now - maybe I can learn something that will help next year.
Congratulations to all those in the SCS community who finished at the pointy end - SC its a very, very, very tough comp and getting anywhere near the winner is an outstanding achievement.
Edit.. I’m hoping someone will be able to post info on the way that the overall winner navigated the season… surely can learn something from the experts.
I was bouncing around in the 20,000 - 35,000 range up until about R15 by whch time I was about 15,000th and I obviously made a little further headway in the run home.
I have regularly been inside the top 10K, so this season goes down a quite a disappointment.
I'm finding it fairly difficult to pinpoint the reason(s) for my lacklustre showing especially when I consider these key factors..
1 - I dont feel like I was as badly hit on the injury front as many others in the SCS community. In other years I've thought I copped more than my fair share, but that won't wash (with me anyway) this time.
2 - When I look back at my starting line-up, it seems that I did quite a lot right. This table shows my squads as at R1, at R3 after some corrective trades & before price changes and my final team. The black outline-boxing highlights those players I held all the way thru.
Nevertheless I obviously managed to do a lot of dumb things as I finished up a whopping 3,338 points behind Oozin Sauce.
.. in hindsight I was almost dead in the water really early in the year.
I may be wrong, but I feel like you can have a slow start and then make up quite a lot of ground in the rankings, but I reckon it's much harder to make up points on the leading coaches - of course that may just be my experience
.This table reveals how quickly I feel off the pace.
It records the points deficit (in increments of 500) and the round I first fell that far behind the progressive leader.
These figures suggest my biggest mistakes (or biggest hits) must have been made fairly early in the season - even though I seem to have picked a pretty decent starting squad.
There are probably too many to bother trying to pin them all down, but I think these are part of the puzzle.
1 - I made Sean Darcy captain in R2 and he produced an all-time, injury-free score of 41
I rage-traded him to English and I suppose that wasnt a bad eventuality, but Darcy averaged over 125 for the next 7 weeks. Just maddening & damaging.2 - Coming into R4, I traded in Amartey and Rowston - ouch!
3 - Coming into R5, I was tossing up all week between Kozzy Pickett (who'd scored 144 - - 89) and Mitch Owens(76 97 76 143) They were both about $360K at that stage and I went disastrously wrong with KP. Over the next 2 rounds Kozzy produced scores of 61 & 16 when I duly offloaded him. Naturally he rebounded 121 & 74, but his price barely moved across those 4 rounds. In contrast, in that period Owens averaged 95 and made $125K
4 - Holding Constable all the way - gained me nothing. Probably holding Madden as a Ruck FD was reasonable, but two FD's is one too many.
Later on I made more questionable trade-ins such a s Fyfe & Yeo, but when you are way behind, you probably go for long-shot moves that may yield a big pay-off. I also picked up Steele and Mills when they were cheaper than expected, but their output was patchy at best.
There's plenty of time to reflect & analyse now - maybe I can learn something that will help next year.
Congratulations to all those in the SCS community who finished at the pointy end - SC its a very, very, very tough comp and getting anywhere near the winner is an outstanding achievement.
Edit.. I’m hoping someone will be able to post info on the way that the overall winner navigated the season… surely can learn something from the experts.
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Oh Geez! Where do I start?
At the beginning I spose, hopefully this exercise is cathartic
Starting Team:
Docherty - Cumming-L Jones Cowan
Ginbey-Wilmot-Chesser Uwland
Laird-Bontompelli-J Kelly Hollands
Green-Worpel-Hopper Baker
Ashcroft-MacKenzie Phillipou
Marshall-Darcy Madden
Dunkley-Coniglio-Rozee Greene
Taranto-Sheezel-Flanders Davey
A reasonable starting team I thought but having Laird (C) 50pts, Jones 5pts and Chesser 20pts pretty much consigned me a 77k ranking.
Panicked by the poor start probably led me to making trades too early and too reactive in rnd 2
Out:
Flanders, Kelly & Jones
In:
JHF, Redman & McKenna
Should have held Jones who made 100k and averaged 66 up until his 18 in rnd12, same with Kelly who averaged 115 in his next 8 until again injured. Booted JHF after 2rnds should have held him until his bye and made 110k and Redman was very up and down, a poor pick who I had to hold all year.
I'm not going to go through all my trades for the year in this post but my early trades were really poor. Over the next 4 rounds.....
In:
Pickett
Setterfield
LDU
Roberts
Johnson
Day
Out:
Cumming (injured)
Doc (injured for just the rnds)
Others
Used 11 trades going into rnd5 which of course came home to roost later. When Darcy went down in rnd12 had the choice of English, Witts or Briggs, chose Witts coming off an average of 117 and the 'good' bye, proceeded to deliver a 98 average for the rest of the year. I was stacked with rnd15 players so avoided English who went on to average 133 from rnd 12, same bye round for Briggs plus I thought I'd have to use an extra trade later but he averaged 108 from then and made a cool 320k.
Taking Warner over Gulden in rnd10 was another fail although did look good for the 1st couple of rounds, Gulden averaged 114 from rnd10 and Warner averaged 104 in the games he played but I had to hold him over the 3 he missed which cost over 150pts extra.
Also brought in Mills, Fyfe and Yeo after consciously not starting the last 2 because of injury concerns.
Went from a ranking of 77k in rnd3 to 26k in rnd15, finished up at 37k, mainly due to too many sub premo players and running out of trades in rnd20. Also had too many mid pricers that failed to make enough cash to warrant being picked (or me not having the patience to hold eg; JHF) So cash gen proved to be an issue all year which probably led to a few poor choices being made in the rush to get a 'complete' team.
Lots of lessons learnt though, both through my less than ideal decision making, but moreso through the help, advice and knowledge sharing that goes on within this community.
At the beginning I spose, hopefully this exercise is cathartic
Starting Team:
Docherty - Cumming-L Jones Cowan
Ginbey-Wilmot-Chesser Uwland
Laird-Bontompelli-J Kelly Hollands
Green-Worpel-Hopper Baker
Ashcroft-MacKenzie Phillipou
Marshall-Darcy Madden
Dunkley-Coniglio-Rozee Greene
Taranto-Sheezel-Flanders Davey
A reasonable starting team I thought but having Laird (C) 50pts, Jones 5pts and Chesser 20pts pretty much consigned me a 77k ranking.
Panicked by the poor start probably led me to making trades too early and too reactive in rnd 2
Out:
Flanders, Kelly & Jones
In:
JHF, Redman & McKenna
Should have held Jones who made 100k and averaged 66 up until his 18 in rnd12, same with Kelly who averaged 115 in his next 8 until again injured. Booted JHF after 2rnds should have held him until his bye and made 110k and Redman was very up and down, a poor pick who I had to hold all year.
I'm not going to go through all my trades for the year in this post but my early trades were really poor. Over the next 4 rounds.....
In:
Pickett
Setterfield
LDU
Roberts
Johnson
Day
Out:
Cumming (injured)
Doc (injured for just the rnds)
Others
Used 11 trades going into rnd5 which of course came home to roost later. When Darcy went down in rnd12 had the choice of English, Witts or Briggs, chose Witts coming off an average of 117 and the 'good' bye, proceeded to deliver a 98 average for the rest of the year. I was stacked with rnd15 players so avoided English who went on to average 133 from rnd 12, same bye round for Briggs plus I thought I'd have to use an extra trade later but he averaged 108 from then and made a cool 320k.
Taking Warner over Gulden in rnd10 was another fail although did look good for the 1st couple of rounds, Gulden averaged 114 from rnd10 and Warner averaged 104 in the games he played but I had to hold him over the 3 he missed which cost over 150pts extra.
Also brought in Mills, Fyfe and Yeo after consciously not starting the last 2 because of injury concerns.
Went from a ranking of 77k in rnd3 to 26k in rnd15, finished up at 37k, mainly due to too many sub premo players and running out of trades in rnd20. Also had too many mid pricers that failed to make enough cash to warrant being picked (or me not having the patience to hold eg; JHF) So cash gen proved to be an issue all year which probably led to a few poor choices being made in the rush to get a 'complete' team.
Lots of lessons learnt though, both through my less than ideal decision making, but moreso through the help, advice and knowledge sharing that goes on within this community.
Starting Team: (you may note the 50 point captain!)
Final Team:
Season Progress:
Trade History:
Overall Rank: 8598 (down 7000 from 2022)
Best Starting Selections: Gulden, by the length of the straight. Up until an hour before North played in round 1, I had Cunnington in this spot - my word that was a dodged bullet!
Honourable mention to Kade Chandler, but annoyingly I didn't trust him enough in the earlier rounds and kept a donut to get his scores - and then traded him out just before he got a game!
Only other really good pick was Dawson and even that was a hedge - I couldn't split Stewart, Docherty and Dawson in the pre-season, so I just took them all and corrected as needed. And boy, did I need to!
Worst Starting Selections: A lot of popular ones like Bruhn and Docherty that didn't work, but Steele was particularly bad and Josh Bruce didn't make a lot of money either. Was very bullish on him, but he's no Liam Jones.
Best Trades: Just quickly scouring my list does not make for pretty reading. My round 2 corrections were the most obvious moves in history but valuable all the same - Daicos and Sheezel didn't even need to be thought about for the rest of the year, which for a second year player and a rookie is pretty incredible. Upgrades to Cogs, Day and Merrett (for the third year running!) all worked at good prices. After that things drop off pretty fast...
Worst Trades: Where do we start?
Round 3: Darcy -> D Cameron... which then led to DC -> Nankervis and Nank -> English. In the end Darcy matched English from Round 3 until he got injured anyway! This cost me not only three trades but two precious boosts. (I would have used one in round 3 anyway, probably to get Noah Long cheaper.)
Round 9: upgrading to Noah Anderson after his mammoth game against Melbourne. Never liked it but got sucked in, the bye was the clincher in the end. Got 15 games at basically 100, which wasn't good enough even allowing for there not really being a huge amount of 110+ mids this year. But at least I didn't get Oliver here!
Round 10: upgrading to Sam Walsh - I never thought this would end up being a bad pick but here we are! Not only did he not exceed 120 even once after I brought him in, but I ended up having to carry him through his late season injury due to having run out of trades. I would certainly have preferred to carry Tom Green but he went down first and it happened in a week where everyone was struggling for numbers!
Round 13: Trading out Ashcroft and Wilmot straight off their bye was not in the plan here. But everyone else I would have preferred to trade out was coming off an awesome round 12 which made me prefer their cash gen. After trading these two out they both went on an absolute tear, which could have made my bye rounds even better. Probably the only good part of my season, and it could have been so much better.
Round 15: Elliot Yeo was supposed to complete my team... and I got ONE game out of him before he went down. I knew I was taking a risk but that was pretty wretched luck, especially considered I'd waited to see two good weeks first before getting him in! Those ended up being his only two tons of the season.
Also Darcy Cameron again, because apparently I didn't learn my lesson the first time!
Final Team:
Season Progress:
Trade History:
Overall Rank: 8598 (down 7000 from 2022)
Best Starting Selections: Gulden, by the length of the straight. Up until an hour before North played in round 1, I had Cunnington in this spot - my word that was a dodged bullet!
Honourable mention to Kade Chandler, but annoyingly I didn't trust him enough in the earlier rounds and kept a donut to get his scores - and then traded him out just before he got a game!
Only other really good pick was Dawson and even that was a hedge - I couldn't split Stewart, Docherty and Dawson in the pre-season, so I just took them all and corrected as needed. And boy, did I need to!
Worst Starting Selections: A lot of popular ones like Bruhn and Docherty that didn't work, but Steele was particularly bad and Josh Bruce didn't make a lot of money either. Was very bullish on him, but he's no Liam Jones.
Best Trades: Just quickly scouring my list does not make for pretty reading. My round 2 corrections were the most obvious moves in history but valuable all the same - Daicos and Sheezel didn't even need to be thought about for the rest of the year, which for a second year player and a rookie is pretty incredible. Upgrades to Cogs, Day and Merrett (for the third year running!) all worked at good prices. After that things drop off pretty fast...
Worst Trades: Where do we start?
Round 3: Darcy -> D Cameron... which then led to DC -> Nankervis and Nank -> English. In the end Darcy matched English from Round 3 until he got injured anyway! This cost me not only three trades but two precious boosts. (I would have used one in round 3 anyway, probably to get Noah Long cheaper.)
Round 9: upgrading to Noah Anderson after his mammoth game against Melbourne. Never liked it but got sucked in, the bye was the clincher in the end. Got 15 games at basically 100, which wasn't good enough even allowing for there not really being a huge amount of 110+ mids this year. But at least I didn't get Oliver here!
Round 10: upgrading to Sam Walsh - I never thought this would end up being a bad pick but here we are! Not only did he not exceed 120 even once after I brought him in, but I ended up having to carry him through his late season injury due to having run out of trades. I would certainly have preferred to carry Tom Green but he went down first and it happened in a week where everyone was struggling for numbers!
Round 13: Trading out Ashcroft and Wilmot straight off their bye was not in the plan here. But everyone else I would have preferred to trade out was coming off an awesome round 12 which made me prefer their cash gen. After trading these two out they both went on an absolute tear, which could have made my bye rounds even better. Probably the only good part of my season, and it could have been so much better.
Round 15: Elliot Yeo was supposed to complete my team... and I got ONE game out of him before he went down. I knew I was taking a risk but that was pretty wretched luck, especially considered I'd waited to see two good weeks first before getting him in! Those ended up being his only two tons of the season.
Also Darcy Cameron again, because apparently I didn't learn my lesson the first time!
I honestly wonder if this might be my last "serious" season. I got into top 5000, then finished 8008th overall after using my last trade with a few weeks to go. Happy enough. I haven't watched a single minute of AFL this season, and I haven't been to a live game since the day before my eldest daughter was born 6 years ago. I don't consume any AFL content outside of this forum.
Time for a think. I'll never ghost ship, but I'll not be as competitive in this as I am in other sports that I focus on more day to day.
Time for a think. I'll never ghost ship, but I'll not be as competitive in this as I am in other sports that I focus on more day to day.
I finished at # 12735
I was bouncing around in the 20,000 - 35,000 range up until about R15 by whch time I was about 15,000th and I obviously made a little further headway in the run home.
I have regularly been inside the top 10K, so this season goes down a quite a disappointment.
I'm finding it fairly difficult to pinpoint the reason(s) for my lacklustre showing especially when I consider these key factors..
1 - I dont feel like I was as badly hit on the injury front as many others in the SCS community. In other years I've thought I copped more than my fair share, but that won't wash (with me anyway) this time.
2 - When I look back at my starting line-up, it seems that I did quite a lot right. This table shows my squads as at R1, at R3 after some corrective trades & before price changes and my final team. The black outline-boxing highlights those players I held all the way thru.
View attachment 61282
Nevertheless I obviously managed to do a lot of dumb things as I finished up a whopping 3,338 points behind Oozin Sauce.
.. in hindsight I was almost dead in the water really early in the year.
I may be wrong, but I feel like you can have a slow start and then make up quite a lot of ground in the rankings, but I reckon it's much harder to make up points on the leading coaches - of course that may just be my experience.
This table reveals how quickly I feel off the pace.
It records the points deficit (in increments of 500) and the round I first fell that far behind the progressive leader.
View attachment 61283
These figures suggest my biggest mistakes (or biggest hits) must have been made fairly early in the season - even though I seem to have picked a pretty decent starting squad.
There are probably too many to bother trying to pin them all down, but I think these are part of the puzzle.
1 - I made Sean Darcy captain in R2 and he produced an all-time, injury-free score of 41 I rage-traded him to English and I suppose that wasnt a bad eventuality, but Darcy averaged over 125 for the next 7 weeks. Just maddening & damaging.
2 - Coming into R4, I traded in Amartey and Rowston - ouch!
3 - Coming into R5, I was tossing up all week between Kozzy Pickett (who'd scored 144 - - 89) and Mitch Owens(76 97 76 143) They were both about $360K at that stage and I went disastrously wrong with KP. Over the next 2 rounds Kozzy produced scores of 61 & 16 when I duly offloaded him. Naturally he rebounded 121 & 74, but his price barely moved across those 4 rounds. In contrast, in that period Owens averaged 95 and made $125K
4 - Holding Constable all the way - gained me nothing. Probably holding Madden as a Ruck FD was reasonable, but two FD's is one too many.
Later on I made more questionable trade-ins such a s Fyfe & Yeo, but when you are way behind, you probably go for long-shot moves that may yield a big pay-off. I also picked up Steele and Mills when they were cheaper than expected, but their output was patchy at best.
There's plenty of time to reflect & analyse now - maybe I can learn something that will help next year.
Congratulations to all those in the SCS community who finished at the pointy end - SC its a very, very, very tough comp and getting anywhere near the winner is an outstanding achievement.
Edit.. I’m hoping someone will be able to post info on the way that the overall winner navigated the season… surely can learn something from the experts.
I was bouncing around in the 20,000 - 35,000 range up until about R15 by whch time I was about 15,000th and I obviously made a little further headway in the run home.
I have regularly been inside the top 10K, so this season goes down a quite a disappointment.
I'm finding it fairly difficult to pinpoint the reason(s) for my lacklustre showing especially when I consider these key factors..
1 - I dont feel like I was as badly hit on the injury front as many others in the SCS community. In other years I've thought I copped more than my fair share, but that won't wash (with me anyway) this time.
2 - When I look back at my starting line-up, it seems that I did quite a lot right. This table shows my squads as at R1, at R3 after some corrective trades & before price changes and my final team. The black outline-boxing highlights those players I held all the way thru.
View attachment 61282
Nevertheless I obviously managed to do a lot of dumb things as I finished up a whopping 3,338 points behind Oozin Sauce.
.. in hindsight I was almost dead in the water really early in the year.
I may be wrong, but I feel like you can have a slow start and then make up quite a lot of ground in the rankings, but I reckon it's much harder to make up points on the leading coaches - of course that may just be my experience
.This table reveals how quickly I feel off the pace.
It records the points deficit (in increments of 500) and the round I first fell that far behind the progressive leader.
View attachment 61283
These figures suggest my biggest mistakes (or biggest hits) must have been made fairly early in the season - even though I seem to have picked a pretty decent starting squad.
There are probably too many to bother trying to pin them all down, but I think these are part of the puzzle.
1 - I made Sean Darcy captain in R2 and he produced an all-time, injury-free score of 41
I rage-traded him to English and I suppose that wasnt a bad eventuality, but Darcy averaged over 125 for the next 7 weeks. Just maddening & damaging.2 - Coming into R4, I traded in Amartey and Rowston - ouch!
3 - Coming into R5, I was tossing up all week between Kozzy Pickett (who'd scored 144 - - 89) and Mitch Owens(76 97 76 143) They were both about $360K at that stage and I went disastrously wrong with KP. Over the next 2 rounds Kozzy produced scores of 61 & 16 when I duly offloaded him. Naturally he rebounded 121 & 74, but his price barely moved across those 4 rounds. In contrast, in that period Owens averaged 95 and made $125K
4 - Holding Constable all the way - gained me nothing. Probably holding Madden as a Ruck FD was reasonable, but two FD's is one too many.
Later on I made more questionable trade-ins such a s Fyfe & Yeo, but when you are way behind, you probably go for long-shot moves that may yield a big pay-off. I also picked up Steele and Mills when they were cheaper than expected, but their output was patchy at best.
There's plenty of time to reflect & analyse now - maybe I can learn something that will help next year.
Congratulations to all those in the SCS community who finished at the pointy end - SC its a very, very, very tough comp and getting anywhere near the winner is an outstanding achievement.
Edit.. I’m hoping someone will be able to post info on the way that the overall winner navigated the season… surely can learn something from the experts.
A couple of things came to mind in reading this that I thought I’d flag, in case it influences your conclusions/helps for future years:
- One thing to consider is that the leader at R2 is likely to be different to the one at R5, 10, 23 etc. I suspect that those leading as early as R2 may have jagged some high ceiling players that went their way. They may not even be experienced coaches/those targeting overall rankings. Those leading close to R23 have likely set themselves up very well using more of a traditional, overall-oriented strategy, in addition to having a degree of luck. So the comparison above is kind of comparing yourself against a moving target, both in the identity of individual coaches and possibly their type. This may be setting quite a high bar for yourself. It’s hard to keep up with those who may be taking very high or short term focused risks at the start, and still be in a position to compete with those playing a high quality long game at the back end.
- Reading through some of your decisions, it sounds like in some cases you made an initial call that was potentially viable, but that may have been risky in that it created difficult decisions for you if/when they didn’t work out in the short term. This can lead to a bit of a downward spiral (not in the sense of being out of control necessarily, just that it kind of feeds on itself in terms of falling further behind) if luck goes against you. One thing I have found beneficial is to try to think about the risk of needing an exit strategy for a trade (eg picking an injury prone player, or someone who is not a proven premium, increases the chances of another trade being needed or warranted), and then weighing whether the trade still seems attractive if you add the expected cost of extra trades in to the initial assessment.
I hope this helps. I like your analysis and think your review of your season/those of very high performing coaches will almost certainly help get your ranking back up next year.
Bit of a rough one for me this year. Scrambled to 3780 through some well timed trades and being a bit more conservative for most (didnt have to hold Daicos) Had a really poor start like a few others. Copped the Laird 50 into Max & Steele injuries which led to Cameron in then out to start the season. Setterfield & Miller both in/out in consecutive weeks. Hard to really recover from that sort of early luck. Stupidly traded Ashcroft and Sheezel early which hurt a bit too.
Shocking starting side, should have been more proactive in fixing it as i ended the year with a boost (Doc - Dawson would have been 100s of points over the first half of the year)
Few good ins that helped me gifht to a semi respectable rank.
Treloar @517k 17/109 (including Hamstring cover)
Merrett @564 14/123
Brayshaw @531k 15/114
Stewart at @583k Who never got cheaper all year and averaged 117
Sinclair @552k 12/112
Biggest lesson learned is leave the young mid pricers alone.
Initial Team
Ending side
Shocking starting side, should have been more proactive in fixing it as i ended the year with a boost (Doc - Dawson would have been 100s of points over the first half of the year)
Few good ins that helped me gifht to a semi respectable rank.
Treloar @517k 17/109 (including Hamstring cover)
Merrett @564 14/123
Brayshaw @531k 15/114
Stewart at @583k Who never got cheaper all year and averaged 117
Sinclair @552k 12/112
Biggest lesson learned is leave the young mid pricers alone.
Initial Team
Ending side
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Not a great season, 7,298th overall. Got smashed in $100 cash league every week, despite finishing 8th in overall points.
Biggest learning to share is the importance of keeping trades and having reliable, DPP players, however this argument could be countered by using trades to get ahead, however I’ve no doubt people’s teams struggled from round 21! To prove this theory, i moved from 13,487th in round 21 to 7,298th in round 24.
Anyway, enjoyable season as usual. Gotta get back in the top 1000 next year. Congrats to all who did well!
Biggest learning to share is the importance of keeping trades and having reliable, DPP players, however this argument could be countered by using trades to get ahead, however I’ve no doubt people’s teams struggled from round 21! To prove this theory, i moved from 13,487th in round 21 to 7,298th in round 24.
Anyway, enjoyable season as usual. Gotta get back in the top 1000 next year. Congrats to all who did well!
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Thanks @Darkie for your constructive and considered thoughts on my earlier season review post.
I've been trying my hand at SC since it first started and haven't made it into the top 5K yet... but you know what they say about septuagenarians who grew up barracking for Footscray and "new tricks".
I agree with your trades advice - I probably overplay the positive side of things too much. In retrospect I think I'm also inclined to jump on to an "emerging" player too quickly.. only to find that they quickly disappoint. Certainly that trait hurt me this season.
I'm still mulling over the other point you made about the way the leading coaches score over the course of the season..
Last year I think it was @Beg2Differ (on maybe @randomcliche) who posted a detailed account of the 2022 winner's season.
I'd like to see something like that again.. I understand that the progressive leader would chop and change a bit - early on - nevertheless I would be interested to know the maximum pts that the season winner ever fell behind.
I thought of another one of my bigger mistakes.. I traded out Sheezel trying to finesse the byes.. He just kept producing phenomenal scores - way more than the player(s) I finished up with in his spot.
I've been trying my hand at SC since it first started and haven't made it into the top 5K yet... but you know what they say about septuagenarians who grew up barracking for Footscray and "new tricks".
I agree with your trades advice - I probably overplay the positive side of things too much. In retrospect I think I'm also inclined to jump on to an "emerging" player too quickly.. only to find that they quickly disappoint. Certainly that trait hurt me this season.
I'm still mulling over the other point you made about the way the leading coaches score over the course of the season..
Last year I think it was @Beg2Differ (on maybe @randomcliche) who posted a detailed account of the 2022 winner's season.
I'd like to see something like that again.. I understand that the progressive leader would chop and change a bit - early on - nevertheless I would be interested to know the maximum pts that the season winner ever fell behind.
I thought of another one of my bigger mistakes.. I traded out Sheezel trying to finesse the byes.. He just kept producing phenomenal scores - way more than the player(s) I finished up with in his spot.
No problem, I hope it helps somewhat.
I think if you keep applying your analytical approach, you won’t be too far off that top 5k. One thing that I find has helped me a lot is to pretty much only pick premiums that have at least one full season of premium scoring behind them before you select them. You will miss out on the odd breakout player (let’s say Gulden), but you will also dodge a lot of bullets. Choosing players with good historical game counts is similar … those players can still cop an ACL, but it should reduce your risk of having a string of bad injuries.
There are definitely other SCS members who have posted info on the winning teams on this site. I will tag @Rowsus @Impromptu and @freowho who come to mind in that regard, and who may be able to point you in the right direction, if my memory serves me correctly!
One thing I would say is that I think sometimes people put too much emphasis on the winning team’s specific strategy, and not enough on the broader strategies that put a group of teams in the mix (say, top 100) late in the season, or even which strategies lead to the best results prospectively (ie looking at the whole distribution, without just focusing on the top ranked teams). It’s a bit like in the AFL itself … if Richmond win the flag by a goal, a lot of teams go and copy elements of their style over the off season, but if they go down by a goal, another team wins, and the competition could end up copying a totally different strategy. The fact that a single match result swing by two goals shouldn’t cause teams to adopt totally different strategies, but sometimes I reckon it can, when it’s the grand final.
I wouldn’t kick yourself for trading Sheezel. He and Daicos are the only two rookies I can think of that have ended up being genuinely solid keepers all season, rather than passable options that were mainly beneficial holds because they conserved a trade. I used to think those players were basically a myth, but both have now done it. Both win the Rising Star, incidentally, and were very high draft picks, so the bar is pretty high.
I think if you keep applying your analytical approach, you won’t be too far off that top 5k. One thing that I find has helped me a lot is to pretty much only pick premiums that have at least one full season of premium scoring behind them before you select them. You will miss out on the odd breakout player (let’s say Gulden), but you will also dodge a lot of bullets. Choosing players with good historical game counts is similar … those players can still cop an ACL, but it should reduce your risk of having a string of bad injuries.
There are definitely other SCS members who have posted info on the winning teams on this site. I will tag @Rowsus @Impromptu and @freowho who come to mind in that regard, and who may be able to point you in the right direction, if my memory serves me correctly!
One thing I would say is that I think sometimes people put too much emphasis on the winning team’s specific strategy, and not enough on the broader strategies that put a group of teams in the mix (say, top 100) late in the season, or even which strategies lead to the best results prospectively (ie looking at the whole distribution, without just focusing on the top ranked teams). It’s a bit like in the AFL itself … if Richmond win the flag by a goal, a lot of teams go and copy elements of their style over the off season, but if they go down by a goal, another team wins, and the competition could end up copying a totally different strategy. The fact that a single match result swing by two goals shouldn’t cause teams to adopt totally different strategies, but sometimes I reckon it can, when it’s the grand final.
I wouldn’t kick yourself for trading Sheezel. He and Daicos are the only two rookies I can think of that have ended up being genuinely solid keepers all season, rather than passable options that were mainly beneficial holds because they conserved a trade. I used to think those players were basically a myth, but both have now done it. Both win the Rising Star, incidentally, and were very high draft picks, so the bar is pretty high.
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Terrific @Beg2Differ.. many thanks.
I’ll have a good look at it and see what - if anything - I can deduce from the winners tactics
I’ll have a good look at it and see what - if anything - I can deduce from the winners tactics
Thought I’d post a bit of a review
final rank: 7th
Went into the season a bit disappointed after dropping 2k ranks in the last 4 weeks last year to end 3k following my 42nd the year before.
starting team this year put me in a very nice spot as I had a good mix of good picks and enough picks to trade out to pick up nessecary players, which is very important I found out after having a very strong start team last year (rank 100 after rnd 2) but couldn’t trade in some must haves as no one was screaming to be traded out
Posted a trade breakdown in rnd 24 teams and discussion and did notice myself that there weren’t many insane trades just barely any horror issues
Captains played a big part in my rank this year, ended up with an average of just below 140 including no captains below 100
Am very happy with how the season went especially with how lucky I got late avoiding many injuries all season.
Am happy the season is done as I do tend to spend way to much time on SC and need some time to focus on my studies
Happy to answer questions or anything, mind still needs it’s SC fix
Thanks everyone
final rank: 7th
Went into the season a bit disappointed after dropping 2k ranks in the last 4 weeks last year to end 3k following my 42nd the year before.
starting team this year put me in a very nice spot as I had a good mix of good picks and enough picks to trade out to pick up nessecary players, which is very important I found out after having a very strong start team last year (rank 100 after rnd 2) but couldn’t trade in some must haves as no one was screaming to be traded out
Posted a trade breakdown in rnd 24 teams and discussion and did notice myself that there weren’t many insane trades just barely any horror issues
Captains played a big part in my rank this year, ended up with an average of just below 140 including no captains below 100
Am very happy with how the season went especially with how lucky I got late avoiding many injuries all season.
Am happy the season is done as I do tend to spend way to much time on SC and need some time to focus on my studies
Happy to answer questions or anything, mind still needs it’s SC fix
Thanks everyone
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