Follow these 11 commandments for KFC SuperCoach 2021

Getting the right rookies is a key to KFC SuperCoach success, and getting the wrong ones is disastrous. Follow these 11 golden rules for SuperCoach success.

SuperCoach is game full of fun and occasional drama.

These are the golden rules that can guide you through troubled KFC SuperCoach waters when it’s easy to lose our heads.

With some simple planning by following these some basic guidelines you should be able to come out of this season with your head above water.

From rookie selections to bye-round planning, KFC SuperCoach expert Alexie Beovich pronounces his 11 commandments for season 2020.

1. PICK ROOKIES WHO ARE LOCKED IN FOR ROUND 1

Every year we have a few rookies who look good in the pre-season but surprise us by missing out on selection for the first game of the year.

Instead of selecting them and waiting for them to debut in a couple of weeks, skip them and pick them up later for a nice cash injection into your side.

This was a rule I ignored last year and it stung me.

Having Will Gould, Jez McLennan and Trent Bianco sitting on my bench for the majority of 2020 really made cash generation difficult, restricting my options when it came to making trades during the season. These were guys who were “absolute locks to play” but didn’t take the field in Round 1 and subsequently combined for a total of zero points for the entire year.

So I repeat, pick rookies who are locked in for Round 1.

ROOKIE BIBLE: ULTIMATE GUIDE TO BEST SUPERCOACH CHEAPIES

Will Gould is in the mix for a Round 1 debut for Sydney ... again.

2. DON’T PAY A PREMIUM FOR INJURED PLAYERS

I didn’t think I’d have to include a commandment like this again in 2021, but looking at the ownership percentages provided by SuperCoach Plus, it feels like it needs to be said again.

If a player has been injured throughout the off-season, is “expected to be at full match fitness by Round 1” or is seen jogging around the track in the lead-up to the season, don’t pick them!

Patrick Dangerfield has been battling a groin injury and Lachie Whitfield has a bruised liver but both are still in 20 per cent of teams. If these struggles continue then you’re just throwing money away by starting them in your side!

Observe the rest of the pre-season, listen to the injury reports and you might just grab yourself a bargain or two later on down the track.

Patrick Dangerfield has been held back by a groin problem this pre-season.

3. BE FLEXIBLE

If last year taught us anything it’s that we’re going to need flexibility to cover ourselves through a less than certain year of football, that means using dual-position-players (DPPs) to our advantage.

This year we have some great options that can provide some insurance if something goes pear-shaped. For example, combining Rowan Marshall in the forward line with Josh Treacy in the ruck line will help you cover an injury to Max Gawn or Brodie Grundy.

Selecting a combination of Aiden Fyfe, Trent Bianco or Lachie Young with Rory Laird will mean you can swing players from defence to midfield in a pinch.

Nakia Cockatoo and Finlay Macrae can combine with Dustin Martin and Josh Dunkley.

You have to build some of these DPP connections into your side if you want to save yourself some headaches later on.

4. LIMIT YOUR MID-PRICE MADNESS

Sometimes mid-price selections can set your season off to a flying start, often they can end your season before it begins.

Picking the correct mid-pricers is often hard but your season doesn’t necessarily depend on getting them right, you just can’t pick too many of the wrong ones.

It’s easy to recover from selecting one or two poor mid-pricers but it’s almost impossible to recover if you have five or six clogging up your list.

This year you have plenty of mid-pricers to look at, some of the most popular picks so far are Jack Ziebell ($257,900 FWD), Jackson Hately ($310,300 MID), Wayne Milera ($312,200 DEF), Dyson Heppell ($319,600 MID), Jye Caldwell ($348,600 FWD/MID) and Jeremy Cameron ($388,100 FWD).

There is logic behind all of these selections but you can’t select too many of them or it’ll make your season very difficult if they backfire. Remember, they are cheap for a reason!

Assess the options, pick one or two that you think will succeed and be prepared to trade into any keeper-worthy players that you missed.

MORE: 11 PLAYERS YOU MUST PICK IN KFC SUPERCOACH

Essendon recruit Jye Caldwell could be a big improver this year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

5. PLAN FOR THE BYES

We’re going to assume that the byes will happen as currently scheduled for this commandment.

To put it simply, make sure that you select a decent spread of premiums with different bye rounds in your initial starting squad.

Round 14 currently sees Adelaide, Collingwood, St Kilda, Sydney, Fremantle and Melbourne all sharing the same bye.

That means players like Rory Laird, Brodie Grundy, Jack Steele, Jake Lloyd, Nat Fyfe and Max Gawn will all be missing at the same time, we must plan accordingly.

We’ll be able to bolster our sides in the two rounds leading up to Round 14, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, and being safe means trying to spread your premiums out across all three bye rounds if you’re playing for overall rankings.

If you’re a league player and you don’t care about the byes, stack your midfield with Steele Sidebottom, Clayton Oliver, Christian Petracca, Luke Parker and Andrew Brayshaw and enjoy that feeling of relaxation!

Rory Laird is a proven scorer in KFC SuperCoach — but beware the bye!

6. PLAN FOR THE BYE ROUNDS … MORE

All right, we’ve established a decent spread of players across the bye rounds, but who is going to be our captain? This is actually something we can plan for now!

Everyone is going to be selecting a few deadset guns for their side — Lachie Neale, Brodie Grundy and Max Gawn will all have their fair share of owners in 2021, but these three players don’t give you a guaranteed captain’s score for all of the bye rounds.

Neale is a safe captain option during the first bye round (Round 12) which is great, tick him off your list.

In Round 13 Gawn and Grundy go head-to-head on Queen’s Birthday. Given both of their averages drop to 95 points when they play each other, we’re going to need another option.

So who to target? Well, Fremantle takes on Gold Coast so Nat Fyfe is a great option there. Geelong and Port Adelaide clash, giving us Patrick Dangerfield and Travis Boak to look at, but my early pick is Jake Lloyd, who will play against a youthful Hawthorn outfit in Round 13.

And Round 14, the final bye week (also known as the nightmare round) rules out about half of the gun premiums in the comp, but luckily Neale will be well-rested and back to captain our sides.

Spending five minutes looking at the fixture and thinking about the bye rounds should give you an edge over your league rival.

7. AVOID TRADING PREMIUM SELECTIONS

There are only two situations in which you should consider trading a premium selection — the player is injured or the player has had a permanent role change.

Not all injuries will require a trade, but if a player is going to miss more than two weeks then it might be worth considering moving him on.

Role changes aren’t always easy to identify and are sometimes thrust upon our premium selections due to injuries to teammates.

Luke Ryan is a great example of this from 2020, he started off the year poorly, failing to hit 80 points in three of his first four games, partly due to form and partly due to having to play a more key-position role than we expected.

If you’d held onto him you would’ve seen him adjust his game and go on to score 100-plus in 12 of his next 13 games.

It’s not always going to turn out like this, but more often than not a premium you’ve selected is going to produce the points you want them to, sometimes it’s just a waiting game.

Trade out a player like Lachie Neale after one bad game and you will regret it.

8. MILK THE MOST OUT OF YOUR CASH COWS

It’s important to not trade your rookies too early!

With the right planning and listening to the right podcasts (tune into the Jock Reynolds SuperCoach podcast wherever you get your podcasts) you can squeeze plenty of cash out of your fattened rookies as their average reaches their break-even.

Generating value from your rookies is integral to being able to afford those premiums you want in your side.

A great tool for keeping on top of your cash generation is by subscribing to SuperCoach Plus, you’ll be able to see all of your rookie price projections throughout the year.

9. PLAY SUPERCOACH DRAFT

Most people reading this will be regular SuperCoach Classic players, but that’s not all this amazing game has to offer!

Think you can draft better than the clubs? SuperCoach Draft is a fantastic version of SuperCoach where every player in the competition is placed in a draft pool and can only be selected once, leaving you with a huge variety of unique teams competing for premiership glory.

Get some friends together or find a public league, create your pre-draft list order, jump into a draft and enjoy the pressure of deciding between Lachie Neale and Max Gawn before the time runs out!

MORE: PLAYERS TO AVOID IN KFC SUPERCOACH

Dustin Martin has the advantage of playing on Thursday night in Round 1. Picture: Jason Edwards

10. WATCH TEAM SELECTION CLOSELY

It was always going to happen but the AFL has introduced new team submission rules permanently, so AFL teams will only be required to name their squads 24 hours out from their game.

This isn’t good news for SuperCoach players out there, but we had some experience with these rules in 2020 and that should serve us well.

The first thing we need to do is keep a close eye on any debutant announcement videos heading into Round 1, this will give us key information on which rookies we can safely bring into our teams (and some adorable footage of players calling their mums).

The second thing we need to do under these new rules is select players who are locked into their team’s best 22. Jarman Impey might not be the most exciting option at $202,900 in the forward line, but he appears to be locked into his old position off half-back and that job security might be worth paying the extra $80,000 over a tentative rookie.

The final thing we need to do to mitigate the risk of doughnuts (zeros) on our field throughout the year is watch out for club injury reports. While they sometimes contain some misinformation on time frames at least we’ll know if any of our premos are in doubt.

11. ENJOY SUPERCOACH!

Last year I wrote that we needed to take the stress out of SuperCoach and enjoy going to the footy more … well, for a lot of us that clearly didn’t happen.

So this year I’m saying that we must enjoy the footy, in whatever ways we can.

Enjoy it while it’s on TV, get to games if you can, embrace the game in whichever format it appears and of course, enjoy SuperCoach!

Enjoy the fact that we even have SuperCoach, last year it was a wonderful distraction through a pretty challenging time.

Let’s embrace it, hope that it can run as normal and if we do have condensed fixtures or abandoned games, let’s just enjoy it for what it is.

At the end of the day SuperCoach is a game, so let’s have some fun.

If you want to hear more from me or have your own SuperCoach rules you want to discuss, you can hit me up on Twitter at @LekdogSC or over at jockreynolds.com.au, where you can also subscribe to our podcast.