In SuperCoach, the midfield plays an important role in the selection of your team in terms of team structure. The obvious reason is that your midfield often has the true premiums of SuperCoach such as Gary Ablett, Scott Pendlebury, Dane Swan, Marc Murphy and company, whereby they can consistently average in excess of 110 and can also be used as your captain.
With the restructure of the SuperCoach rules, teams can now select 10 midfield players and 8 starting midfielders and therefore the option of selecting 0 to 8 premium midfielders. The premium midfield topic was previously discussed in the Engine Room article.
The Engine Room article is about selecting your team based on your preferred midfield premiums, however an alternative to this is selecting your team based on your preferred rookies. Initially, this article was supposed to be on selecting your teams based on rookies, whether it be a defender, midfielder, forward or ruck, however coincidentally after week 1 of the NAB Cup, it appears that the rookies that are likely to get early games are categorised in the midfield in SuperCoach. Therefore, while the article is based on midfield rookies, the same principles apply to rookies in other positions.
The poll from the Engine Room article indicate about 80% of the voters will have 3 to 5 midfield premiums in their initial SuperCoach team. I'm actually quite surprised with the poll result as I would have expected more premiums, possibly 80% of voters having 4 to 6 premiums.
The question is will the outcome of round 1 team selection and more accurately, if more midfield rookies are selected round 1 with solid pre-season games change the structure of your team and the structure of your midfield?
After week 1 of round 1 of the NAB Cup, you could say Brad Crouch with 7 (TOG 70%) and 7 disposals (52%) and Kane Mitchell (if elevated) with 6 (79%) and 11 disposals (85%) would be strong chances of being round 1 debuts. While week 2 of the round 1 NAB Cup has yet to be played, just off the top of my head, Jesse Lonegan, Jaeger O'Meara, Matt Jones and Jack Viney could be round 1 contenders. Mr Floating Donut might also need a spot as an initial rookie-priced midfielder.
Therefore, the questions now becomes do you pick the premium midfielder or do you pick the rookie midfielder with the rookie midfielder having more chances to get games and/or good scores than rookies in other positions?
For me, I think it's a combination of both, selecting on the basis of premiums and also on rookies.
To illustrate that sometimes I do base my SuperCoach team on rookies, have a read of my article on my 8 Rookie Midfield strategy in SuperCoach 2010 where I finished 724th. Don't let 724th ranking mislead you in thinking the strategy was unsuccessful as I've always been of the view that my SuperCoach team of 2010 was far superior than my SuperCoach team of 2011 when I won the entire competition. It is just I failed at the pointy end of the season with Rockliff and Podsiadly among other things. My point of mentioning that strategy is to firstly have a walk through memory lane
and secondly to demonstrate that you can select your team based on rookies. My midfield comprised of J. Trengove, D.Martin , M.Barlow, L.Shuey, R.Bastinac, T.Banfield, M.Banner and L.Jetta.
So far in SuperCoach 2013, my midfield rookie locks or near locks are Kane Mitchell (elevation is expected as Nick Salter's application for the Long Term Injury list has been lodged), Brad Crouch, Jaeger O'Meara, Matt Jones and Jack Viney. Mr Floating Donut also holds a spot in my team. With basic arithmetic, it means that at most I'll have 4 midfield premiums. Naturally, I'll be changing my team left, right and centre before the round 1 lockout, but at this stage my team is controlled by the rookies, in particular the midfield rookies.
While the midfield rookies control the structure of my team, Gary Ablett and Scott Pendlebury trumps everything due to the fact I need them for scoring and captain/vice-captain loophole.
One of the benefits of having more rookie midfielders is that you have less premium midfielders, whch all things being equal means you'll have more premiums in your team overall. This is because a premium midfielder can be priced at about $100K to $200K more than other premiums (excluding the first few of each non-midfield premiums). The other benefit is of course that as midfield premiums are priced higher they need to maintain a higher average to retain their value. I think if you can use the Loose Change wisely, ie the $100K to $200K then it could be an added bonus of having additional rookie midfielders.
It's a difficult one to decide, however just a friendly reminder to not only look at the best midfield premiums, but to look at what rookies you may miss.
Will you be planning your team based on the premiums or the rookies?
While the outcome of the poll of this article could simply be the reciprocal of the poll of the Engine Room article, it may not due to the involvement of mid priced players and furthermore the poll of the Engine Room was done 2 months early before we saw any action from the rookies.
For discussions Rookies, have a look at: Rookies Discussion
NB - For the purposes of this article, I've ignored Pittard, Goodes, Stevenson as there will usually be spots available in the defence.
With the restructure of the SuperCoach rules, teams can now select 10 midfield players and 8 starting midfielders and therefore the option of selecting 0 to 8 premium midfielders. The premium midfield topic was previously discussed in the Engine Room article.
The Engine Room article is about selecting your team based on your preferred midfield premiums, however an alternative to this is selecting your team based on your preferred rookies. Initially, this article was supposed to be on selecting your teams based on rookies, whether it be a defender, midfielder, forward or ruck, however coincidentally after week 1 of the NAB Cup, it appears that the rookies that are likely to get early games are categorised in the midfield in SuperCoach. Therefore, while the article is based on midfield rookies, the same principles apply to rookies in other positions.
The poll from the Engine Room article indicate about 80% of the voters will have 3 to 5 midfield premiums in their initial SuperCoach team. I'm actually quite surprised with the poll result as I would have expected more premiums, possibly 80% of voters having 4 to 6 premiums.
The question is will the outcome of round 1 team selection and more accurately, if more midfield rookies are selected round 1 with solid pre-season games change the structure of your team and the structure of your midfield?
After week 1 of round 1 of the NAB Cup, you could say Brad Crouch with 7 (TOG 70%) and 7 disposals (52%) and Kane Mitchell (if elevated) with 6 (79%) and 11 disposals (85%) would be strong chances of being round 1 debuts. While week 2 of the round 1 NAB Cup has yet to be played, just off the top of my head, Jesse Lonegan, Jaeger O'Meara, Matt Jones and Jack Viney could be round 1 contenders. Mr Floating Donut might also need a spot as an initial rookie-priced midfielder.
Therefore, the questions now becomes do you pick the premium midfielder or do you pick the rookie midfielder with the rookie midfielder having more chances to get games and/or good scores than rookies in other positions?
For me, I think it's a combination of both, selecting on the basis of premiums and also on rookies.
To illustrate that sometimes I do base my SuperCoach team on rookies, have a read of my article on my 8 Rookie Midfield strategy in SuperCoach 2010 where I finished 724th. Don't let 724th ranking mislead you in thinking the strategy was unsuccessful as I've always been of the view that my SuperCoach team of 2010 was far superior than my SuperCoach team of 2011 when I won the entire competition. It is just I failed at the pointy end of the season with Rockliff and Podsiadly among other things. My point of mentioning that strategy is to firstly have a walk through memory lane
and secondly to demonstrate that you can select your team based on rookies. My midfield comprised of J. Trengove, D.Martin , M.Barlow, L.Shuey, R.Bastinac, T.Banfield, M.Banner and L.Jetta.So far in SuperCoach 2013, my midfield rookie locks or near locks are Kane Mitchell (elevation is expected as Nick Salter's application for the Long Term Injury list has been lodged), Brad Crouch, Jaeger O'Meara, Matt Jones and Jack Viney. Mr Floating Donut also holds a spot in my team. With basic arithmetic, it means that at most I'll have 4 midfield premiums. Naturally, I'll be changing my team left, right and centre before the round 1 lockout, but at this stage my team is controlled by the rookies, in particular the midfield rookies.
While the midfield rookies control the structure of my team, Gary Ablett and Scott Pendlebury trumps everything due to the fact I need them for scoring and captain/vice-captain loophole.
One of the benefits of having more rookie midfielders is that you have less premium midfielders, whch all things being equal means you'll have more premiums in your team overall. This is because a premium midfielder can be priced at about $100K to $200K more than other premiums (excluding the first few of each non-midfield premiums). The other benefit is of course that as midfield premiums are priced higher they need to maintain a higher average to retain their value. I think if you can use the Loose Change wisely, ie the $100K to $200K then it could be an added bonus of having additional rookie midfielders.
It's a difficult one to decide, however just a friendly reminder to not only look at the best midfield premiums, but to look at what rookies you may miss.
Will you be planning your team based on the premiums or the rookies?
While the outcome of the poll of this article could simply be the reciprocal of the poll of the Engine Room article, it may not due to the involvement of mid priced players and furthermore the poll of the Engine Room was done 2 months early before we saw any action from the rookies.
For discussions Rookies, have a look at: Rookies Discussion
NB - For the purposes of this article, I've ignored Pittard, Goodes, Stevenson as there will usually be spots available in the defence.
