Toying with a risky strategy

Hey Guys, I am currently toying with a risky strategy that i thought i might share and see what people think.

Without seeing any NAB cup the general consensus from people in the know is that all the quality rookies are going to be in the MID early this season. Guys like Martin, Trengrove, Scully, Morabito, Melksham, Shuey, Bastinac etc are all touted as solid players that are likely to debut early in the season. In DEF and FWD we are clutching at straws trying to find even two quality rookies per position that are likely to play early (Nab cup might show up a few more options).

So this brings me to a possible strategy that could make or break me early. Brace yourselves guys..... I am contemplating running Ablett in the MID with 5 starting rookies and 2 bench rookies

I am hoping throughout the NAB cup i will be able to identify 7 midfield rookies that are going to give me 5 "playing" for each week. The scoring from my MID will be limited however there should be a couple of those guys that get close to 100 every now and again but the big peice to the pie is the other postions. Because i have so much money left my DEF, RUCK and FWD are full of high end premiums with a sprinkling of guys like dangerfield and Ziebell that could become keepers. Then all i have to do is identify 2 DEF rookies for the bench and 2 FWD rookies for the bench. I think its a lock that Warnock and Lobbe will sit on the bench for my Rucks.

Heres some pros and cons to the strategy.

PROS:
Likely to have this years Rich, Broughton and Anthony all in the side. Less chance of picking the "wrong" rookie as i nearly have all of them.
Massive points coming from FWD and DEF.
Don't have to shuffle too much in FWD and DEF as they should all be keepers from round 1.
Will gain maximum cash from quality rookies.
get to cherry pick premium mids when they bottom out (Pendles, Sellwood, Swann, NDS etc)

CONS
May have zeros at the start
low scoring midfield
May get rookies that just play 1 or 2 games and then disappear


I am not sold on it yet but i am seriously considering this strategy. What do you guys think?

Whoah! 5 starting mid rookies.... I was looking at starting 3 possibly but 5 I think is too many for my liking. Remember the forwards are the most volatile area of the ground. Many premiums in that area of the ground drop price early before hitting their straps - ie Reiwoldt ( although he is having a great pre-season so that may change this year), Goodes, J Brown are classic examples of this. The midfield is the highest scoring area of the ground so will be missing out on big points there. I would look at 4 back premiums, 3 mids ( 3 rookies), 2 premium rucks, 3 or 4 forwards. Provides much more balance to your team. Kudos for thinking outside the square, but too risky for my liking

Yer Dav you got me thinking about 3 mid starters which would lock my 7 backs.

They would be: Goddard, Fisher, Hurn, Hodge, Adcock, Kennelly, Hunt. res: Maguire, Davis.
Pretty strong hey! Really depends on SHeppard and some say he looks skinny!

My forwards would be 3/4 premiums and the rest upgrade targets

5 Mid starters no thanks, not even for a league win

I like the thinking behind it as has been mentioned but yeh too risky for me, but think of it this way, doing something different is the thing that is going to win you the entire competition. If you think about this if it really pays off your team will be so different that if say a lot of prem. mids get injured and your rookies pay off you could be so far ahead of the competition. Then again could flop in the first 5 rounds and you won't have much fun with an underperforming team

Love the way you're thinking.
But hey - isn't that the whole thing about SC - taking risks. The only thing that changes is your degree of risk.

It may work this year, but next it may not, or visa-versa.

Maybe tone down the risk a bit and throw in one more prem in the mid? Still alot of risk, but you never know......

Yeah it is a little extreme however i figure i am going to have 5 starting rookies anyway as i always run with a heavy Premium / Rookie strategy and generally only get a couple in between if i think they are extremely good value and likely to become keepers like Higgins and Krakouer last year. So for me if i look at it as a total of 22 players and ignore their positions then 5 rookies is fine, It just happens that all the good rookies are MID's.

Here is a an example of a team i could run with.




Don't take too much notice of which rookies they are. The ones selected are just as an example and will all change with NAB cup.

As you can see my DEF is unbelievably strong and should probably only need Shoenmakers to be upgraded down the track.

RUCK's are solid and should average 200+ ppg. I would hope i don't have to waste a trade here.

FWD's are strong with some risk. Goodes and Roo are slow starters, Tippet and Franklin are up and down, Zeibell and Dangerfield might not deliver as much as expected. Pavlich is fairly consistent and should average 100+. It is not too far fetched to imagine that all 7 of these players could average close to or over 100 ppg. However realistically i believe at least one maybe two of these players will need to be upgraded. The most likely scenario is Ziebell and Dangerfield needing to be upgraded once they hit mid 400k however Franklin or Tippet may need moving on depending on what they deliver.

Ablett will smash it up again and should hold his average of about 140ppg.

The big question is "How good are these midfield rookies?" I am sure that if they were all on the park from round 1 and playing each week they could average 65ppg per player. The task for me now is to pick a group of 7 that will have a minimum of 5 playing each week. This looks extremely possible by the way the coaches are talking up the rookies in their respective squads!

So in a perfect world from round 1 i could be looking at this...

DEF 700+
MID 600+ (Ablett as captain)
RUCK 200+
FWD 700+

2200 from round 1 would be handy... Knowing that i am building cash to get Pendlebury, Sellwood, NDS, Swan and Judd into the team is pretty awesome.

Now i am not sold on this yet but i tell you what if i took the risk and the rookies played well and delivered what they are promising so far then i would have a pretty handy team.

Devils advocate......

If some of the rookies don't pay off and a couple of the prems from either DEF or FWD get an LTI and you could be in trouble with Trades.......

Again as I said earlier there is always a degree of risk in SC - it's just a matter of how much you are willing to take - great idea though.

Bugga you Bonnie Doon..now you got me thinking about 3 starting rookies instead of the 2 i had..(greed ) lol , 5 in all..man i thought i'd covered most all aspects of my team but you gone and thrown a buty spanner in the works and it does work looking at your screen print..hell..the extra money can go to a better premiun from day one....man sometimes i wonder if the headaches are worth it..sure they are, coz we love the game!! anyway thanks for another sleepless night..this game jus gets into my mind....

mate i am going with 3 rookies a mid price, premium and a slightly fallen prem and i thought that was risky.

It could be a great move in the long term, although i would want to be sure that all of them were playing early, first round early. not sure scully will be there personally, I'm hoping he comes in about round 5-6 along with cunnington to give me some cash out options. Don't think they'll be that late but you never know.

In the backs not sold on Drummond upping his scoring this year (bit more competition for the quarterback role this year) and as always durability remains an issue. Also I am steering away from Premium Tigers, who knows what will happen role wise.

interesting thoughts you propose

Haha Linkster, It is good to keep thinking.

Tony - Yeah i am not sold on Drummond, Newman etc i just posted that team to give people an idea of what is possible with this strategy..

And also Tony i agree with your point on making sure they are going to play early. This is the key to the strategy as far as im concerned. If i can find 7 solid midfield rookies that are named for round 1 and are likely to play the first 6 rounds then the strategy is a big chance i reckon.

I have been doing some thinking on your radical strategy Bonnie. The structure that I believe works best is this - max is 5 in back/fwd 4 in mid and 2 in rucks. This allows you to watch the market and grab at least 2 bargins in each position except rucks which I believe is very much a lock & load situation. Every year there are premiums that fall in price early in all positions. By stacking your backs, forwards you are limiting your options a great deal as the season progresses. Then to grab the mid premiums that fall in price, you will have to wait until your rookies make a truckload of money before you can get them so you could miss some real bargains there also. Always good to try something different, but I think the cons outweigh the pros here.

True Dav but I do like the idea of locking the majority of backs not unlike last season. Sure Mids and Forwards tend to have big price drops at stages but the backs seem to maitain some consistancy apart from injury ie Raines and Adcock last year. I agree 5 starting mid rookies are too many but 3 has some upside as possibly the only upgrades down back could be a Hunt, Kenelly or Ladson who may make enough for a single trade upgrade or even turn into a keeper!

For me now I think it all depends on how Shepperd looks as a starterback as opposed to a Scully or Bastnic in the mids! These two mids could quite easily turn into keepers as well, Im not so sure about Shepperd!

I am all about saving trades this year after taking 3 donuts into the GF last year

I'm really starting to like the look of the teams I make using the 3 rookies in the mids.It's not that different from what I have done in past years I would start a rookie in each position except the rucks and the mid rookies usually score higher than their forward and back kkps.I am really liking the flexibilty of the teams (all 100+ of them that I have done and redone.)

Hey Bonnie,
massively risky strategy but could pay off in the long run like the others said.
backline is going to be extremely good.
mid rookies pretty good at this stage. maybe a 70 or 80 average from the higher drafted mid rookies like trengrove and martin.
maybe get a more consistent scorer instead of tippett or buddy if you have doubts. both will have big drops and big gains during the year.

i like this a lot. i mean, there are barely any good cash cows in other positions, so might as well put them all in the midfield. im just going for a league win so i dont mind sacrificing the first few games if it means ill have a better team at the end of the year