Vent 2021 Fantasy Regrets / Vents .... Oh My !

[Neale4brownlow]

Probably the most painful thing is I had a lot of picks that were good, but were terrible at the start of the year....

But a lot of duds too.

Def: Laird, Clark, Markov, Fantasia, Young, Webster (Highmore/Kosi)
Mid: Macrae, Merrett, Gaff, Taranto, Tyson, Drew, Powell, Gulden (Berry/Scott)
Ruck: Gruny/Flynn (Meek)
Fwd: Danger, Dunkley, DeGoey, Phillips, Caldwell, Warner (Rowe/Bergman).
Utility: Jordan

Dead set fails: Clark, Young, Gaff, Tyson, Phillips, Webster. ie 5x mid pricers and 1x fake premo.

OK picks but injury/timing (ie sheer bad luck): Drew, Dunkley, Danger, DeGoey, Caldwell.

In hindsight I should've had:
1) Hind over Tyson (silly me thinking Tyson might be better than Hind this year......). I actually picked Drew over Hind as my POD. Which.. if I held out for the entire year would've been correct. But Drew forced me to trade him after being dropped, then sub... then dominated after that. Cheers...
2) Young over Cumming. Tough one. Even in hindsight I don't blame myself for picking Young.
3) Titch over Gaff. Yuck. What was I thinking.

Realistically those are the only calls I was close too and didn't make.

Defense I went a bit too "Value" which forced a lot of trades early which is ultimately what forced my slide in rankings from round 8 onwards. I was chasing myself in circles while others were improving. I tried a different structure there and I will easily put it in the fail column. Need 2x keepers minimum in defense.

Trades spent up to round 10:
Def: 9 - ie more than a complete swapout.
Mid: 2
Ruck: 1
Fwd: 6 - ie almost a complete swapout.

I made a concerted effort to try to have more points ticking over in the midfield this year and it still didn't work. I think the golden rule is just pay up for 3 or 4 big dog mids and have them for the year. Life is less stressful that way.

Probably the other gross stat is of my ~40 trades for the year, only 5 gave me a tonne on debut.

 

[Milo Cyrus]

My injury list this year has been phenomenal.
Dangerfield - Reported for three then high ankle.
Harmes - broken digit
Witts - ACL
Dunks - Shoulder dis.
Stephenson - finger?
Fantasia - Knee
Gulden - knee/leg?
Treloar - syndesmosis
Grundy - pinched nerve
Docherty - Ankle
Heppell - finger
Whitfield - concussion
Langford - hammy
Harmes again - ear infection
Cripps - bruised foot
Neale - shoulder/calf
Pendles - hammy?
17 ****ing injuries. Enough said.

 

[Neale4brownlow]

My injury list this year has been phenomenal.
Dangerfield - Reported for three then high ankle.
Harmes - broken digit
Witts - ACL
Dunks - Shoulder dis.
Stephenson - finger?
Fantasia - Knee
Gulden - knee/leg?
Treloar - syndesmosis
Grundy - pinched nerve
Docherty - Ankle
Heppell - finger
Whitfield - concussion
Langford - hammy
Harmes again - ear infection
Cripps - bruised foot
Neale - shoulder/calf
Pendles - hammy?
17 ******* injuries. Enough said.

Same here. I had 14 by round 12 which is fun.
Then 1 each week the past 3 weeks which is also fun when you're trying to fix the duds and someone new raises their hand each week.

 

[Milo Cyrus]

Same here. I had 14 by round 12 which is fun.
Then 1 each week the past 3 weeks which is also fun when you're trying to fix the duds and someone new raises their hand each week.

Not sure there is any remedy for it either, not like its all soft tissue injuries.

 

[Neale4brownlow]

Not sure there is any remedy for it either, not like its all soft tissue injuries.

Nope.

I even think I nailed my structure other than going slightly too thin in defense.

I was somewhat right predicting Defense was garbage and too hard to pick the gems.

I was right that forwards would be volatile - so I spent up big there trying to decrease the volatility. Only to cop injuries to almost every single one.

I even picked guys like Gaff who are safe as houses in terms of injury free and scoring (so I thought).

2021 has been a complete lottery more so than previous years.

I for one am hoping they remove the rolling lockout situation asap. I'd want to see full lockout every round regardless. Looping frustrates me week in week out.

 

[Corby_4]

Was relatively happy with my starting line-up this year.
Nailed most of the cash cows I could which set me up fairly well.
Clark was a bad pick and became Markov at the end of the round
Didn't start with Rowell and got rid of Phillips early which were good calls but held Gaff for far too long moving him on only a few weeks ago.
Laird, Stewart, Zerrett, Walsh, Taranto, Grundy, Danger (out and in) are all in my current side.
Injuries this year have been crippling.

 

[4tune8]

I guess any proper analysis, by its very nature, is going to long winded. I hope though that some of my conclusions might help others when looking at the construction and development of their teams in the future.

Firstly, and probably foremost, is that I haven't been able to watch any games this year, maybe a quarter here or there. So I've had rely on forums like this to get some idea of players roles and positional changes, obviously not ideal when decisive moves have to be made. If I want to be better at this game then I'll just have to watch more footy.

2. Balance of starting team.

Obviously the most glaring imbalance in my starting team was the all rookie ruckline. I had Gawn in R1 up until just before lockout, but thought 'bugger it' why not go the whole hog and see what happens. Because I was weak there it meant my focus was taken away from seeing and taking advantage of value options as they presented. For example, When Dunks went down in rnd 6 I had no choice but to trade him to a ruck, whereas Parish's role change pretty much demanded that he was the best option (hindsight helps). Earlier on when Danger had to be traded I chose Mitchell in the mids which led to having 6 premos there which limited my rookie options on the best line for them as well as weakening my forwards which meant fielding underperforming Fwd rookies, add Dunkley to a ruck and I was fielding 5 Fwd rookies, consequently shifting my focus there, Ziebell would have been the smarter move.

3. Getting the starting team right.

This is related to the previous point but a bit deeper. I went with a full Guns n Rookies approach determined not to take midpricers. I had never tried this strategy so thought I'd give it a go. Started with 12 year long keepers in my eyes and still have 9 of them, traded out Gaff after round 2 to Brayshaw and whilst Brayshaw has been good, his initial 2 scores and Gaff's previous 2 poor scores combined to set me back. I had Walsh pencilled in all preseason and I still don't know why I went to Brayshaw instead. The main lesson I learnt is that while starting with all guns it's wiser to drop one or two of them for 3-4 midpricers, so a Lloyd and Dusty to Cumming, Impey and Ziebell, would have meant 1 less rookie on field and a total of over $1m in cash earnt and lost! Which leads me to my next point.

4. Cash Generation.

We all know that this is a game of cash and points and it's imperative to get that mix right. So the presumption those teams that start with a high % of Midpricers will do well in the early rounds and then fade does hold some weight. I went the other way and totally relied on rookies to generate cash, whereas a balance of rookies and MP's appears to be the smarter way to go. Starting with 18 rookies is just too many to deal with, but the consequence was that I had a lot of underperforming rookies in that mix, most of my trades in the early rounds was shuffling those rookies. Again being blinkered to the other cash gen opportunites like Walker who could have made me 250k (if I traded him out at the right time). Lesson learnt is that midpricers can also make good $ if you treat them like a rookie and trade them out once their BE's suggest it, Impey was another that earnt nearly 200k.

5. Bye Planning.

I didn't pay enough attention to planning for the byes early on. Looking at my trades going into the byes they smacked of desperation,
Rnd 12. Heeney in
Rnd 13. Greene in
Rnd 14. Heeney out
Houston in
Haynes in
Hunter in
Cunnington in
All of those trades were pretty much Bye driven with only Cunnington (maybe Hunter) being ok, although I've had to trade Cunners out since then.
I scored ok over the 1st 2 byes but the 3rd stuffed me, ended up gaining 1k spots over them but with better planning could have done a lot better. The main lesson for me though was that whilst it's important to try and get a 'finished or close to finished team coming out of the byes, don't wreck your team in doing so.

Coming in to round 20 I'm ranked at 4k odd, after rnd 6 I was 20k or so. I have 1 rookie left on field (Sharp) who looks like staying there and enough other rookies to continue fixing the Haynes/Houstons up to the end of the year. My team value is poor at $18M but looking at the comparative makeup of teams in the top 10 then mine stacks up as just as good.

We can all improve our score by making good (and lucky) decisions with VC and C scores or using the looping game to maximise our bench scores, but I think the above points help in getting and keeping a good team on the park. Injuries will happen and they happen to all coaches, it's how we deal with them that will set you apart.

Thanks #TedDougChris for starting the thread, this is my 3rd year playing any sort of Fantasy game so I hope the lessons I learn others can learn from too.

Good luck to you all for the rest of the year.

 

[Rise_up_Stiffy]

Team was reasonable. Hind, McEvoy and Heppell (despite injuries) were probably the highlights. Got my rooks pretty spot on.

Stewart, Laird, Taranto were good premiums.

A lot of injuries.

Good trades - Jumped on Walker early, I jumped on some good rooks quite early/on debut such as Dev Rob & poulter at bottom price. I continually emphasized cash gen and value, which enabled me to get a solid foundation and finish my team much earlier than others, but my starting squad misses meant I wasn't able to do any better than 2k ranking. I prioritized selling fattened rooks, if it was a little early I was fine if it helped me to get max value from trade ins.

I liked this rd 7 trade specifically, really set me up.



Mistakes were getting injury prone players I like, such as Treloar, Neale. A few bad rookie trade ins such as Amarty, Newcombe. Missed Jeremy Sharp, which annoys me that a rookie can explode like that and reward people who did not prioritize geeting rooks off the ground.

 

[Freo_4eva]

i Dont feel like it was a complete disaster.. just even a couple of changes improves my season out of sight.

Young>Cumming
Webster>Markov
Phillips>Stepho (who i had up until the day of lockout)
Dow>Anyone else

 

[Freo_4eva]

View attachment 1188752

i Dont feel like it was a complete disaster.. just even a couple of changes improves my season out of sight.

Young>Cumming
Webster>Markov
Phillips>Stepho (who i had up until the day of lockout)
Dow>Anyone else

forgot about the Clark trap too.. so really D4-6 was my massive source of crap. The rest i could have worked around if i got those positions right (or less wrong at least)

 

[Milo Cyrus]

Nope.

I even think I nailed my structure other than going slightly too thin in defense.

I was somewhat right predicting Defense was garbage and too hard to pick the gems.

I was right that forwards would be volatile - so I spent up big there trying to decrease the volatility. Only to cop injuries to almost every single one.

I even picked guys like Gaff who are safe as houses in terms of injury free and scoring (so I thought).

2021 has been a complete lottery more so than previous years.

I for one am hoping they remove the rolling lockout situation asap. I'd want to see full lockout every round regardless. Looping frustrates me week in week out.

I'd like to see it simplified to best 22 scorers.

 

[WaynesWorld19]

 

[Thetrader15]

Simpkin wtf.

Hang in there, he'll come good. I've got a good feeling about him.