KFC SuperCoach NRL Draft 2021: 11 tips to help you win
Whether you’re new to KFC SuperCoach Draft or a seasoned pro, these are 11 tips you need to know if you want to come out on top.
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The 2021 NRL season is almost here, which can mean only one thing … it’s KFC SuperCoach Draft time!
Draft Day 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 the draft itself isn’t the be all and end all, it does lay the foundation for the rest of your year, so it’s important to get it right!
Whether you’re new to KFC SuperCoach Draft or a seasoned pro, these are 11 tips you need to know if you want to come out on top.
Good luck in your 2021 Drafts KFC 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.
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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 had a high 2020 average but will miss the start of the season through injury or suspension.
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 hope will have a good year, someone who plays for your favourite team or someone you really like.
In The Daily Telegraph league last year, James Fisher-Harris was surprisingly taken in the second round, much to the amusement of the rest of the league. And while JFH was solid, his average fell from 66 in 2019 to 59, and was no where near as good as some of the other players still available when he was taken, like Cam McInnes, Cameron Murray, Jake Trbojevic, Ryan Matterson or Josh Papalii.
This kind of tomfoolery allows the guys picking after you to get a lot of value from the superior players you passed on.
So as much as you like someone like Latrell Mitchell, Jack Wighton or whoever else, don’t take them over the genuine guns. 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 and Five-Eighth.
This is Draft, so once a player is gone, no one else can have them, so once the best options here are taken you might be stuck with a mediocre player at that position. At hooker for example, there are really only around five or six 80 minutes hookers, so if you miss out on one of these you could be stuck with someone like Victor Radley.
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.
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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 Api Koroisau, Isaah Yeo, Jarome Luai, AJ Brimson, Zac Lomax and Jahrome Hughes 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.
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 knowing how best to take advantage of these could completely change your draft strategy.
If your league plays through the bye rounds you might want to avoid picking too many key players from the same team, since you’ll be without them for a whole week.
If you’re playing in a smaller league with fewer people you don’t need to worry about player depth too much.
If you’re playing a no-captains league, you may wanna stock up on players with reliable base stats rather than players with high upside and low floors.
Or if you’re playing with a different Field Layout outside the standard 17 player format, you’ll want a completely different draft strategy altogether. For example, if you’re playing with a field with just 12 or 14 players with just one or two CTW’s in every team, then filling those low depth positions becomes even more important!
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!
If you know what spot you’re drafting at then you should have a pretty good idea of which players will be on the board by the time your pick comes around. E.g. If you have the seventh draft pick, you’ll know you probably won’t be able to get someone like James Tedesco or Damien Cook, so instead you can plan ahead and prioritise your realistic targets.
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 picking 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 and only 60 seconds to draft someone else. 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. Even the likes of David Nofoaluma or Zac Lomax are risky picks before the 3rd round. CTW’s are just too inconsistent from a KFC SuperCoach perspective and should be avoided for the first few rounds. I myself wouldn’t even consider touching a pure CTW in the first three rounds of the draft.
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 Draft rank and Average Draft Position 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 7th player in the draft rankings and has an ADP of 9, but he should probably not be drafted that early.
11. MOCK DRAFTS
If possible, I would strongly recommend doing a few mock drafts, 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 use a different email address so you don’t waste one of your five league slots on a mock draft league. If you only play in one or two Draft league this won’t be an issue.
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Originally published as KFC SuperCoach NRL Draft 2021: 11 tips to help you win
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