KFC SuperCoach NRL Draft 101: 11 tips to help you win at the Draft
Whether you’re new to KFC SuperCoach draft or a seasoned pro, these are 11 tips you need to follow if you want to come out of the draft with the best team.
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The NRL season is almost here SuperCoaches! By now you all should have created your leagues and be busy hassling your mates to hurry up and sign up in time for Draft Day! This is one of the most important days of the KFC SuperCoach year, but if you don’t know what you’re doing it can also be very stressful. While you don’t win or lose your KFC SuperCoach league at the draft, it does lay the foundation for the rest of your year, so it’s important to get it right!
Whether you’re a beginner or a KFC SuperCoach Draft veteran, these are some invaluable tips that will help you come out on top after the draft is finished. While other teams head into the draft blind and just wing it, we are going to go in with a strategy to help prepare us to win our leagues!
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1. PREPARE EARLY AND DO YOUR HOMEWORK
This should be a no-brainer, but going into the draft blind is not a good idea! Who knows, you may accidentally draft someone who is ranked high but out with an injury.
Try and have a rough plan for the positions you want to have covered for the first fie rounds.
Come up with your own rankings, but also check out ours.
2. DRAFT GUNS EARLY
The first 2-3 rounds are purely for drafting the best players possible: the proven guns. This is definitely not the time to use a draft pick on someone you think will have a good year or someone you really like.
In 2018 one of my league mates drafted Mitch Moses with the ninth pick in the first round and he averaged just 41 points that year. This kind of tomfoolery allows the guys picking after you to get a lot of value from the superior player you passed on. So as much as you like David Fifita or Ryan Papenhuyzen in 2020, don’t take them over the likes of Jason Taumalolo or Tom Trbojevic.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but there is always some joker who makes a silly first round pick!
3. FILL YOUR LOW DEPTH POSITIONS EARLY
Now while you do want to get the best players possible in the first few rounds, try and use them to get guns that also play in those low depth positions: Hooker, Halfback, Five-Eighth and Fullback.
This is Draft, so once a player is gone, no one else can have them, so once the best options here are gone you might be stuck with a mediocre player at that position. While everyone can have Damien Cook and Cameron Smith in Classic, only two SuperCoaches can have them in draft!
Now this doesn't mean you should reach on a player and draft them earlier just to fill a key position, but it does mean you need to be aware of the shortage of quality options at these positions when drafting.
4. LOOK FOR VALUE: DRAFT PLAYERS WITH UPSIDE MID-LATE
Now this is the area where KFC SuperCoach draft is really won or lost. It’s all well and good to draft guns early, but everyone else is getting guns too. It’s the value picks in the mid to late parts of the draft that can help set your team apart from the rest.
For example, players like Payne Haas, Bronson Xerri, Briton Nikora, John Bateman, Cameron Murray were all still available in the mid and late rounds of drafts, and players who drafted them would have been cheering by season’s end.
This year make sure you have earmarked some players who you think will go later in drafts but have the potential to breakout like these guys did.
5. PAY ATTENTION TO OTHER TEAMS
Keep track of who other people have drafted, and what positions they have covered! If you need a halfback and the people drafting after you also need one, then you probably can’t afford to wait too long to fill that position, as the best options might be gone by the time the draft comes back to you.
On the other hand, if all the other teams have a position covered then you have a lot more time and could draft other players and hunt for value at that position later.
6. KNOW YOUR LEAGUE SETTINGS
Not all leagues have the same settings, and the field layout settings of your league could completely change your draft strategy.
Let me preface by saying I think you should stick with the standard 17 player NRL layout of one HOK, two FRF, three 2RF, one HFB, one 5/8, four CTW, one FLB and four bench spots.
Now if your league does decide to pick one of the other formats with less players, like a league with just one or two CTW’s for example, then filling those low depth positions becomes even more important! In fact in these formats, I wouldn't even consider drafting a CTW, 2RF or FRF in the first few rounds.
7. PLAN YOUR DRAFT PICKS
Head into the draft with a battleplan and a rough idea of the players you want to target, and the positions you want to fill first. This will no doubt fall apart as the draft unfolds and all the players you wanted are taken, but you will be prepared! You do have a lot of time between picks and you can plan your picks ahead of time.
8. HAVE BACKUP PICKS IN MIND
Part of preparing early is having a back up plan, because you can guarantee the other people in your league will be looking at some of the same players are you. There is nothing worse than having the guy you were eyeing going the pick before you and you had no back up option. Avoid the ‘panic picks’ and have a few players in mind for each pick.
9. AVOID CTW’s EARLY
I know seeing gun CTW’s on the board in the second round can be tempting, but don’t do it! There really are no CTW’s that are worth taking over some of the other guns available in the early rounds. CTW’s are just too inconsistent from a SuperCoach perspective and should be avoided for the first few rounds. I myself wouldn’t even consider touching a pure CTW in the first 4 rounds of the draft.
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10. DON’T REACH
I have already touched on this in a few of my other points again, but I just want to reiterate one more time that unless necessary, don’t take a player earlier than you need. The exception would be that if there was legitimately only one good player left at a certain position.
The pre-draft rankings are a pretty good guide of pointing out the players that should be prioritised, but it is by no means gospel, since it can also be misleading. For example, David Nofoaluma is ranked as the 20th player in the pre-draft rankings, but he should definitely NOT be the 20th player picked.
11. MOCK DRAFTS
If possible, I would strongly recommend doing a few mockdrafts, ideally with a bunch of random people and not your mates. Wouldn’t want to give away your hidden value picks now would we?
Mock drafting will give you a good sense of how early players are going, will give you practice for picking time pressure, lets you experiment with picks & draft strategy, and might also reveal some hidden gems who weren’t on your radar.
Unfortunately there is no easy Mock Draft feature on KFC SuperCoach so you might want to create a new email address so you don’t waste one of your five league slots on a mock draft league.
Good luck in your 2020 drafts SuperCoaches! Hopefully by following these tips you can come out of the draft with a better team than the rest of your league mates, and smash them this year.
CHECK OUT MORE EXPERT KFC SUPERCOACH NRL ANALYSIS