KFC SuperCoach 2021: Al Paton reveals his first draft team

SuperCoach guru Al Paton has loaded up his forward line with a number of dual position stars — that means he’s had to find some bargains elsewhere.

The first player I picked when the KFC SuperCoach team picker opened was in the ruck.

Max Gawn is a scoring behemoth and Brodie Grundy is, if anything, underpriced at $648,200. They came in at No.2 and No.3.

Ahead of them is Fremantle tall Josh Treacy.

I don’t know anything about the No.7 pick in the rookie draft (Google tells me he’s a key forward from Cohuna in northern Victoria) except that he’s a RUCK/FWD dual-position player available for just $102,400, providing ultimate flexibility on the bench for minimum cost.

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Al Paton won't make the same mistake this season.

Clearly cost wasn’t such an issue for my on-field rucks. A cut-price R2 is a real option for next season — Braydon Preuss is the leading candidate — but if you start without Gawn it’s going to be almost impossible to get him, while Grundy is primed to improve on his 120.6 average from 2020.

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Jeremy Howe is on the comeback trail from a knee injury.

A lesson from this year was to lock away the elite scorers in each position, paying up for the privilege of not having to watch them post huge scores for my league opponents every week.

So Jake Lloyd, Lachie Neale and Patrick Dangerfield (as a forward) are in, forget the cost.

The big strategic call at this (very) early stage is to load up in the forward line, where we have a bunch of DPP stars to pick from. Of that group I think Sidebottom — who could replace Adam Treloar in the Magpies centre square set up — and Josh Dunkley — who had injuries and a surprising move into the ruck to deal with in 2020 — present the best value. But you could make a great case for Rowan Marshall, Dayne Zorko — plus, of course, Dustin Martin.

Josh Dunkley is capable of huge KFC SuperCoach scores. Picture: Michael Klein

In the midfield I think the next batch of stars after Neale are overpriced after a 2020 season that gave the highest scorers are larger slice of the KFC SuperCoach pie in shortened matches; Clayton Oliver could repeat his career-best average of 122.2 but I’m prepared to gamble on him dropping a bit in value.

Anyway, I can’t afford them thanks to my big budget forward line. That means I have to find bargains in the midfield and fortunately there are a few, with Dyson Heppell, Matt Rowell and Jackson Hately all capable of scoring well above their starting price.

Al Paton's first crack at a 2021 KFC SuperCoach line-up.

Other January bargains include defenders Zac Williams, Jeremy Howe and Alex Witherden, North Melbourne skipper Jack Ziebell ($257,900!) and a Brisbane forward by the name of Joe Daniher. The former Bomber is obviously a huge gamble but he only needs to string together 3-4 big games to make a stack of cash.

If he fails, we haven’t lost much. And if Treacy breaks into the Dockers’ line-up I can always flip him to the forward line.