Perfect SuperCoach team would have scored 8500 more points than the 2019 overall winner
SuperCoach players are winding down and enjoying a well-earned break after another huge fantasy season.
Now is a good time to embrace hindsight (and some complex maths) and take a look at what an Optimal SuperCoach team would have looked like for 2019. This team represents all the decisions a coach should have made to obtain the highest score that was theoretically possible.
But first, congratulations to Dwayne Delmenico, coach of this year’s winning team, Raxwell’s Crumbers. Very glad to hear that
someone can go from 20,000th to the overall winner in the space of a year. Gives the rest of us battlers some hope for next year.
This year the optimal team scored 62,101, approximately 8500 points more than the winning team’s overall score of 53,679.
The table below provides an overview of the initial starting squad, including the percentage ownership of each player before the start of Round 1.
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And here’s a summary of the decisions made each round such as who was named captain and who was traded in and out to maximise our score.
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It is also worth pointing out that the team value of the final squad was a whopping $16,695,100 with $81,400 remaining in the budget. This is more than $3 million more than the value of the winning team.
Some observations...
SO MANY PODs
Thirteen of the 30 players in the starting squad had a percentage ownership of less than 10 per cent. They Includes Ricky Henderson, Ben Cunnington, Josh Battle, Rowan Marshall and Reilly O’Brien, who were all in less than 1 per cent of teams. This is a remarkably brave squad that would have likely been laughed out of most “rate my team” forums. It is also interesting to see George Hewett, a name not frequently mentioned in fantasy circles, make an appearance in the team for his captaincy-worthy performance of 154 in Round 7.
WEAK STARTING MIDFIELD AND FORWARD LINES
The initial midfield and forward lines are noticeably light on. Most of the most hyped pre-season premiums such as Patrick Cripps, Patrick Dangerfield, Isaac Heeney, Dustin Martin, Jack Macrae, Clayton Oliver and Nat Fyfe are all overlooked for players such as Lachie Neale, Marcus Bontempelli and Ben Cunnington. In fact, Heeney and Dusty never once make it into the team and Dangerfield only appears in Round 11. The relatively weak midfield and forwards lines freed up the budget to invest in a very strong backline and ruck division.
POWER RUCKS
Max Gawn and Brodie Grundy have made it back-to-back seasons as locks in the ruck. Despite this, probably the highlight of this year’s ruck arsenal was Reilly O’Brien. O’Brien started at $136,800 with an ownership of less 1 per cent before replacing Sam Jabobs as Adelaide’s No.1 ruck for the last 18 games of the season. In fact, O’Brien outscored Grundy, the highest total points-scorer of the season, in Rounds 7 and 12, forcing Grundy to the bench. In Round 13, when both Gawn and Grundy had the bye, O’Brien scored a massive 181 points, earning him the captaincy of the optimal team in that round.
BIG OMISSIONS IN DEFENCE
The most notable omissions this year comes in the defence. Three of the top five highest scoring defenders never feature in the side. Tom Stewart (second), Rory Laird (fourth) and James Sicily (fifth) are all overlooked. This comes despite the fact that the starting squad contained five players in defence all with an initial value of more than $400,000: Jake Lloyd, Lachie Whitfield, Shannon Hurn, Daniel Rich and Zac Williams.
CONSISTENT TRADING PATTERN EMERGING
This is the third year now that we have presented the optimal team of the year. Each time the same trading pattern has emerged. No trades are made until after the Round 3 price changes. The optimal team then trades hard, in particularly around the byes, using all three available trades each round. Then at the back end of the season the team coasts for the last five or six rounds without any trades in the bank. This is only really possible due to the depth of the squad late in the season. For example, in Round 23 the optimal team has the following players sitting on the pine: Nic Newman, Dane Rampe, Adam Treloar, Jarryd Lyons, Michael Walters, Todd Goldstein, James Worpel and Toby Greene. Pretty luxurious, really.
SIBLING SYNERGY
It’s also nice to see that the Curnow brothers are traded into the team on the same week, Round 12. Goes to show that you cannot underestimate the power of having a family oriented team.
SOME WHOPPING SCORES
The optimal team only scores over 3000 in the last round. However, three real teams scored more than the optimal team in the same round so it is clearly shows that these big scores are obtainable in reality.
A special thank you to Max, coach of Frad Bairhurst, for his help with this year’s analysis (Max actually took home the $1k for highest score of Round 19).
Steven is a PhD Candidate in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University and works on large-scale optimisation problems