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Tamuhawk

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Jay and I enjoyed a traditional Vietnamese style cuisine lunch and washed it down with a couple of traditional Vietnamese brewed beers!

View attachment 845

We discussed our strategies and thoughts going into this year SC season and it was my absolute privilege to get some insight into the inner workings of a past champion.

I cannot disclose the finer details of our discussion as both Jay and I would be very embarrassed if the masses knew what we're about to unleash for SC 2016. All I will say is that I do hope that Jay starts with the players we discussed!

It was only fitting that I pick up the tab for lunch...and by the way Jay, it was a bit more than the $35 you previously quoted! :p

To have the SC 2011 and BBL|05 champions in the same room, enjoying lunch and a couple beers was certainly a rare and privilege moment indeed!

#can'tgetanybetterthanthat
looks like pho!
 
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Hey Pearcey,

How do you work out the magic number? (probably a stupid question) :p
Player price divided by last years average. But you can only use players that played most games as players that played only a handful have discounts applied.

So for example - Todd Goldstein is $695,100 divided by last years average of 128.8 = 5,396.
 

Darkie

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What value do you place on a trade?

I know there has been some discussion of this previously, but I am interested in a range of views - especially any rules of thumb/numbers used to determine these.
This is a tough question that gets asked each year. I think I see people valuing them between 100k-200k. The issue I'm finding with placing a value on a trade is that the value is also time and scoring dependent, meaning their is actually 4 variable to consider, and not 2.

Making a trade prior to prices changing to get the right rookie or move on a poisonous mid pricer can be worth 200k+ in the long run, but also a lot of points. Having a trade or 2 at the end of the season when a player goes out injured and you've got no playing bench depth (think 2014) can give you 100-300 points very quickly, but could it have made you more if you had used it earlier?

Here is a quick summary of how I see a seasons worth of trades planning out:
- In the beginning, you will have 30 trades, 10 million dollars in the form of 30 players + remaining cash, and 23 rounds to use that 10 millions and 30 trades
- For your starting team you are likely to have aimed to select approx 13 keepers, 2 mid pricers/speculative picks, and 15 rookies +- a few either side of those numbers
- From that, 10 of your selected keepers will be need to be in your side for the season, 11 of the rookies will do the job you'd hoped, 4 will need to be corrected or lived with, and the remaining 5 players (underperforming or injured keepers/2 speculative) will need to be corrected or lived with.
- You should use 4 trades in the first 3 rounds (before lockout) to make obvious corrections.
- You will need to use about 11 to downgrade enough players, and 9 to upgrade enough

As you can see, those 5 players that we either have to live with or correct are the difference. You only have 6 trades remaining after making the 4 initial corrections and upgrading your side to 'full premium'. If you use all 5 correcting those other players, then you are left with 1 trade to cover injuries for the season. If you have a few injuries, then you are stuck with players that are not performing to the level that you selected them for.

These 6 trades (plus the 4 you make at the start to correct your starting squad) are where the value is held. The closer you can get your starting squad to the 'optimum' squad, the less trades you need upfront. Now this is going to sounds stupid after all of that, but we need to view our trades in light of the next sentence. The game will be won by the person that makes the best initial investment with their 10 million dollars, and can make the best use of their 30 trades. The reason I say this is because you each trade you make is 1 of 30 chance you have to make your squad the best squad, so each time you make a trade don't just consider what it's value is in dollars, but consider it in a holistic way. After all 30 trades are made, will this trade be in your 10 trades, or your worst 10 trades? If your not sure, then take more time to think about it. If you don't have time (lockout, late out in the teams, need to cover a donut) then don't make the trade.

All the best trades I've made have been planned. I've had time to sleep on it, let my unconscious mind do some of the decision making for me, and it feels like the right call. The worst trades I've made have been ill thought out, rushed, or I wasn't sure I was making a good trade. Here's an example of one that pops to mind for me, Jackson Merrett in 2014. I was in line at the movies, I saw a late out and had the option of taking Lewy Taylor as emergency, or trading to Jackson Merrett who was coming off a 4 week ave 95 and was priced at 330k. I traded in Jackson Merrett to make some quick cash, and then flick him come the byes after he'd been cover for the first two bye rounds. Lewy outscored him in that game, and in all but one until the byes, where Merrett was dropped in the first week of the byes. He got as high as 400k, but I couldn't trade him because he was never a part of my trading plan and it was never the right time. I ended up losing money, 2 trades and a lot of points on that rushed trade.

Now one bad trade won't ruin your season (I was ranked 11th overall after round 14 that year), but if you don't think through and plan your trades then that will catch up with you in the end. Consider value, timing, the fallen premiums coming up, the score that you are likely to gain, how many trades and round are remaining, the risk profile in your squad (if it's all Vardy's and Mumford's, you may want to conserve some extra trades), and then consider whether the trade feels right. Don't consider your trades in isolation. If you can't sleep on it, or at least have the time to think about it, distract yourself for 5-10 minutes, then come back to it, then you don't have enough time to make a good decision. I've never been annoyed after making a trade that I'd planned and felt right, but didn't quite work out. I have however felt the sting of a late mind-change, a recommendation in the 11th hour from your work colleague who's been out on the gas and is sure [INSERT NAME HERE] is in for a big score, or a trade happy finger that needs to move on Cripps before his time is up.

Ponder, Plan, Distract, Review, Trade.
The single biggest piece of trading advice I can give (and will hopefully follow this year) is to think of the season in its totality. It's so easy to think of this game as a week by week prospect but when you look back on the season you aren't going to care what your highs and lows were, you will just care about the overall result.

- You don't have to avoid every zero. I'm guilty of this year in year out. If I'm going to cop a zero, I make the best trade available to me at the time. This usually involves a sideways trade or culling a cash cow early.
- You don't have to trade in every bubble boy. Josh Glenn scored 103 in his first game and then averaged 39 in his remaining 4 games for the season and yet so many players here were stuck with him all season. Jack Steele averaged 76.5 in his first two games, burst the bubble with a 94 and then went on to average 50.75 for the rest of the season only playing 4 out of a possible 8 games. Rookies are inconsistent. Just because someone is set for a major price hike doesn't mean you will be behind the 8 ball long term if you miss out.
- You don't have to do every upgrade IMMEDIATELY. How often do you pull the trigger early on an Ablett / Pendles type because they are playing a bottom team and MIGHT explode. This often comes at the expense of someone else in your team. Last year I downgraded Newnes to McKenzie in order to upgrade Ellis Yoleman to Pendles. Pendles averaged 100.75 for the next 4 weeks, Newnes went on to be a defensive keeper.
- You don't need to tinker with your team every week. Half the time I fiddle with it just to feel like I'm doing something! It seems wrong to not trade for 3 weeks in a row so you tinker with minor things and hurt yourself down the track.

Basically - it's a marathon not a sprint. As Jurn said you need to think about how your trades will impact you later on.
Thanks for your comments - some considered input in both of these posts.

A few of my thoughts/highlights from the above:

- I think trades are ideally valued in points, rather than dollars. The game is won by the team with the most points, so dollars are primarily a means to an end. The value of dollars in progressing your team towards that end also varies enormously over the season (it decays). The value of a trade also decays, but less so in my view.

- I used a benchmark of 150 points for a trade last season, skewing this number up early in the year, and vice versa. I agree with Jurn in that the value of a donut late in the year (we basically all have them!) is a good way of thinking about the lower bound on the value of a trade. I would say 100 points is really a minimum on this basis. If anything I think my 150 figure is too low, now that I've thought about it more. I'm erring on making this more like 200 this year. This is part of what I was wondering about in my initial question.

- I agree that it's really important to not leave yourself with too many upgrades to do (because of the limited number of trades, and other uses for them), so you need to start with a good number of keepers, and those keepers need to be good enough that you won't want to upgrade them near the year's end.

- I completely agree on the need to look at the season in totality - I think it's a really good point. Good examples of things that I/others sometimes do that don't fit with this are trading to deal with a single donut, or carrying weak ruck cover to avoid donuts or protect against the need for trades in the rucks. [If there's a good R/F, I think this strategy is fine.]

- Agreed on the bubble boys too. I did some research last year that indicated that if a rookie scored at a certain level in their first game (it was 85 or 100, from memory), they were great odds to make you $150k, so when Glenn hit that, I bent my normal rule and brought him in after one game because I concluded that I would want to trade him in the following week anyway (and he facilitated another trade for me if I went a week early). Turns out that I regretted that decision, even though I thought it was pretty well considered at the time. The bottom line is that fairly high certainty of generating a quick $50k is not really sufficient - there has to be a fairly clear path to at least $150k in my view.

- I agree about trading players in because something "might" happen. To me, when someone makes a comment like that, it's sometimes a sign that the decision is not entirely rational. Decisions based on feel can be successful at times, but I'd rather back my judgment than my feel when it comes to footy/SC. I think it works better for me.

- An important tweak I made to my approach last year was that I tried to ensure that for each trade, both legs improved my team. As an example, I would try to ensure that the player I was trading out was close to fully cooked, while the player I was bringing in was well-timed from a price perspective, but also a quality keeper. Sometimes in the past I think I have sacrificed a good rookie too early, say, because it allowed me to get a cheap Selwood as he was bottoming out ... a big prize, but one that comes at a cost, so the two legs should be balanced as part of the decision. If you're making an extra $25k on the rookie, it may not matter that Selwood is going up $5k (you'd also need to consider the points, of course).

- Another change that I made was that quite often I would trade a player out, eg, $20k short of their expected price peak if deploying the extracted cash more quickly outweighed the benefits of weighting. Again, it's not just about maximising the dollars (it's actually not about maximising the dollars at all!) but maximising the points those dollars contribute by year's end.
 

Impromptu

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Jay and I enjoyed a traditional Vietnamese style cuisine lunch and washed it down with a couple of traditional Vietnamese brewed beers!

View attachment 845

We discussed our strategies and thoughts going into this year SC season and it was my absolute privilege to get some insight into the inner workings of a past champion.

I cannot disclose the finer details of our discussion as both Jay and I would be very embarrassed if the masses knew what we're about to unleash for SC 2016. All I will say is that I do hope that Jay starts with the players we discussed!

It was only fitting that I picked up the tab for lunch...and by the way Jay, it was a bit more than the $35 you previously quoted! :p

To have the SC 2011 and BBL|05 champions in the same room, enjoying lunch and a couple beers was certainly a rare and privilege moment indeed!

#can'tgetanybetterthanthat
Great afternoon mate :)
 
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Is there anywhere we can find previous years winner's starting teams? Or is that wishful thinking?
 

THCLT

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Is there anywhere we can find previous years winner's starting teams? Or is that wishful thinking?
Below are the starting team for past winners from 2010, except for the 2014 winner.

2010: Blue Thunder


D: B.Goddard, N.Malceski, S.Goodwin, C.Enright, L.Hodge, B.Waters, M.Maguire, A.Silvagni, B.Nason
M: G.Ablett J.Selwood L.Ball M.Barlow, D.Martin, R.Bastinac, L.Shuey, J.Kayler-Thomson
R: A.Sandilands D.Hille, M.Warnock, J.Trengove
F: L.Franklin, R.O’Keefe, P.Chapman, M.Pavlich, N.Riewoldt, B.Hall, P.Medhurst, C.Hitchcock, S.Gumbleton

2011: Impromptu

D: B Gibbs, B Deledio, C Enright, N Lower, D Stanley, K Hunt, D Heppell, C Newman, N Duigan, J O'Brien
M: D Swan, C Judd, S Pendlebury, L Montagna, J Pittard, S Atley, R Bewick, D Harris, M Hibberd
R: D Cox, D Petrie, A Sandilands, Z Smith
F: A Goodes, R O'Keefe, N Riewoldt, L Franklin, C Richardson, M Pavlich, J Darling, L Tapscott, B Matera, D Astbury

2012: Powertothepeople

D: B Goddard, B Deledio, J Grimes, B Lake, M Clarke, B Ellis, T Mohr, T Bugg, S Morris
M: G Ablett, J Selwood, J Watson, J Montagna, L Parker, D Shiel, J McDonald, J Magner
R: S Mumford, H McIntosh, J Giles, J Redden
F: L Franklin, M Pavlich, D Martin, S Sidebottom, P Dangerfield, J Porplyzia, D Smith, A Hall, T Dickson

2013: Dimmawit


D: B Goddard, B Gibbs, H Hartlett, B Goodes, J Pitt, H Campbell, L Stevenson, D Terlich
M: G Ablett, S Pendlebury, JPK, T Cotchin, D Mundy, K Stevens, O Wines, K Mitchell, J O'Meara, J Viney
R: D Cox, M Blicavs, M Daw, D Currie
F: D Zorko, J Bartel, T Rockliff, D Martin, T Cloke, P Karnezis, B Macaffer, J Neade

2015: The Night's Watch

D: K McIntosh, A Saad, H Shaw, N Malceski, J Newnes, B Goodes, N Brown, A Oxley
M: G Ablett, P Dangerfield, N Fyfe, S Pendlebury, L Parker, A Brayshaw, P Cripps, T Miller, I Heeney, A Vandenberg, C Ellis-Yolmen
R: T Goldstein, N Naitanui, T Reid
F: R Gray, D Swan, M Clark, J Hogan, C Salem, D Martin, J McGrath, J Lonie

2016: FLYING HORSES


......
......
......
......

Only joking...LOL!
 
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Goodie's Guns

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Yet again a HS article on SC is spot on, I have no idea how the guy could've won SC last year with Gazza his captain... :confused:

"The “King of Supercoach”, Gold Coast’s Gary Ablett, captained Mr Watts 2015 team to success, as he conserved trades until the end of the season to avoid the burden of players who are rested or undergoing late-season surgery."
 

Goodie's Guns

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And here's the top 5 tips from the article...

ADAM WATT’S TOP FIVE SUPERCOACH TIPS


1. Conserve your trades.

2. Hang on to your premium players.

3. Research your rookies.

4. Pick up your rookies when they’ve played at least two games before they go up in price.

5. Trade your rookies when they reach their peak price.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...n/news-story/a85f99a47af395ba3a7bf87f02a5d768
 

Rowsus

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And here's the top 5 tips from the article...

ADAM WATT’S TOP FIVE SUPERCOACH TIPS


1. Conserve your trades.

2. Hang on to your premium players.

3. Research your rookies.

4. Pick up your rookies when they’ve played at least two games before they go up in price.

5. Trade your rookies when they reach their peak price.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/a...n/news-story/a85f99a47af395ba3a7bf87f02a5d768
Who knew?!
This guy may have just revolutionised SC as we know it! :p
 

Goodie's Guns

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GEELONG COACH CHRIS SCOTT TALKS TO THE AFL WEBSITE

OPTIONS IN THE RUCK
"You have either got too many or not enough. You never get it exactly right".
"Hopefully there is genuine competition for spots because we won't play them all".

ON HAVING FOUR PLAYERS ON THE INTERCHANGE
"The jury is still out on what type of player that fourth spot will be. Clearly there is more room for a big guy if we choose to go down that path".

NATHAN VARDY, RHYS STANLEY, MITCH CLARK & ZAC SMITH
Vardy - See him more as a forward/ruckman.
Stanley & Clark - Were both flexible.
Smith - Was exciting.

MARK BLICAVS
"We're hoping [he] won't be a ruckman at all but we have that one up our sleeve".
 

Goodie's Guns

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GOLD COAST LEADERSHIP NEWS

The Gold Coast Suns player leadership model has evolved ahead of the 2016 season.

The new model will see Gary Ablett remain captain, however he will now be joined by emerging leaders Tom Lynch, Steven May and Dion Prestia as vice captains.

The new leadership model of Ablett, Lynch, May and Prestia will be supported by experienced leaders Michael Rischitelli, Nick Malceski, Jarrod Harbrow and Matt Rosa, along with additional emerging leaders David Swallow and Jaeger O’Meara.

Senior coach, Rodney Eade said the club had a heavy focus on leadership on and off the field.
 

IDIG

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Why is it that the misses wants to do housework when i wanna play supercoach (yes i said play :p)...

It's Sunday morning for goodness sake, relax go do it!
 

TomCats

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Why is it that the misses wants to do housework when i wanna play supercoach (yes i said play :p)...

It's Sunday morning for goodness sake, relax go do it!
I promise you that she doesn't want to do the housework but rather needs to do the housework.

Maybe what she really wants is for you you do the housework? ;) :p
 
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