Dreamteam 2008

Obvs, most people reading this will not have the slightest interest, but since I am organising the little league thing I've been playing in for years, I hope writing about it will keep things a bit clearer in my head. There is entirely too much going on inside head.

I'm going to list my team below. I actually have a team in the Herald Sun supercoach competition, but it is the AFL website dreamteam that is the important one.

In the dreamteam competition you play against your mates from rounds 4 to 18 to establish a ladder. Rounds 19 to 22 of the footy calender then become a finals series until you've got a grand final winner. Last year I was beaten in the grand final, which isn't bad seeing as I know pretty much nothing about football. My only real exposure is through this dreamteam thing.

Since the competition doesn't start until round 4, we set up a little in-house pre-season competition in which we all bet 6 crown lagers per game. I won my first round with a score of 1744.

This is my team:
1. CORNES, Chad
2. MILBURN, Darren
3. SHAW, Heath
4. GUERRA, Brent
5. BOWDEN, Joel
6. EDWARDS, Jake
7. THOMPSON, Scott D.
8. CORNES, Kane
9. JACK, Kieren
10. STEVENS, Nick
11. TUCK, Travis
12. DYSON, Ricky
13. PALMER, Rhys
14. COX, Dean
15. WHITE, Jeff
16. JOHNSON, Brad
17. O'KEEFE, Ryan
18. PAVLICH, Matthew
19. THOMAS, Dale
20. JOHNSON, Steve
21. GAMBLE, Ryan
22. LUCAS, Scott
23. BROWN, Nathan J.
24. PFEIFFER, Darren
25. GEARY, Jarryn
26. BIRD, Craig
27. LEUENBERGER, Matthew
28. KREUZER, Matthew
29. RIOLI, Cyril
30. TIPPETT, Kurt

You have 10 million in which to buy your players initally. Throughout the season, you have 20 trades so you can get rid of underperforming players or injuries.

My overall strategy has been to bring in some very expensive but solid players and then complete the team with a whole heap of rookies. Players have their value change each week based on the results of the last 3 games. Picking the right rookies is essential for me because they have to increase a lot in value, which can only happen if they play quite a few games during the year. AFL teams tend not to choose many rookies because they are an unknown risk. Later in the season, I will trade a rookie for someone very cheap and with the money saved trade another rookie for someone very expensive so that by the end of the year I should have an expensive killin' it team.

Most people who play this game choose a couple of expensive good players, mostly average players and a couple of rookies. This means they'll get good scores throughout the year and can upgrade their average players to very good players if their rookies make them money.

My strategy is that I've purchased lots of very expensive players who I intend to keep all year and lots of very cheap players who I hope hope hope will play enough games to be upgraded substantially. My strategy is risky for too reasons; 1.) I may never make a lot of points early in the year so that I end up too far down the year to end into the finals when my team is good and 2.) if the rookies don't play, it's all over red rover. I don't have trades to waste on swapping rookies over each week.

I intend to trade a couple of people at the end of round 3, because the system changes the price after 3 games, that's the best time to pick up a player who is about to explode in price. Prices are established from their averages (mostly from last year). After that, I don't intend to trade at all until Round 12. Again, a risky strategy as I could very well fall down the ladder too far to ever recover. Since there are 20 trades, this means I could make 2 trades per game until the grand final. This has worked well for me in the past since most people actually have no or very few trades going into the finals. Finals are established at the end of Round 18.

The exception to my own rules are expensive players who have long-term injuries.

Going into Round 2:
I'm playing the team that beat me in the grand final last year. My team is sitting pretty except for Scott Lucas who may be out for 10-12 weeks. I may have enough players to cover him until the end of Round 3, but I might just replace him now and score the big points.
I'm tossing up between:
1.) Trading Scott Lucas now for Johnothan Brown.
2.) Trading Scott Lucas now for Paul chapman.
3.) Not trading him and thinking about it later.

The other choice I need to make is regarding Captain. Captain scores double points, so it's important to choose well.

The Cornes brothers are usually excellent choices, as is Pav but this week I'm either going to pick either Dean Cox, Brad Johnson or Chapman if I get him. This is mainly because the Cornes brothers are playing are playing against Sydney who are going at shutting the top players down at the SCG which is not a highscoring ground. Brad Johnson is playing against Melbourne who were dismal against Geelong last week.