Fantasy GOAT Selby Lee-Steere’s tips for adjusting to 2024 SuperCoach changes

A new year of SuperCoach brings new rules for Opening Round and early byes. A two-time AFL Fantasy winner and top-10 finisher in SuperCoach on how to use them to your advantage.

A lot has changed in the SuperCoach landscape over the past few seasons.

We’ve seen increased number of trades, the introduction of in-season position additions, trade boosts and mid-season bye rounds.

However, 2024 SuperCoach could see the biggest changes yet.

The Opening Round has thrown chaos amongst the SuperCoach fraternity. Here is what we have to work with:

GAMES played in the Opening Round will not count in SuperCoach.

TEAMS that play in the Opening Round will have a bye in the first six rounds.

IN ROUNDS where teams have a bye, round scores will be Best 18.

TRADES have increased from 36 to 40.

As with anything in SuperCoach, chaos brings opportunity, and those coaches who can adjust to the changes the best will likely succeed.

OPENING ROUND PLAYERS

SuperCoaches spend all pre-season following training reports, watching match simulation and listening to interviews to best guess the likely roles of players for the upcoming season. While the pre-season always gives a good guide, there is always the element of clubs experimenting, so we never know their exact plans until we see the real stuff.

This year, we’ll be able to see the real stuff for eight teams before we have to finalise our starting squads. That’s almost a cheat code. No need to guess who will pick up the midfield slack at Sydney with Luke Parker and Callum Mills out, who at the Dees will replace Angus Brayshaw’s centre bounce attendances and what roles Damien Hardwick has planned for the Suns players. We will know the answers to all of these questions and build our team accordingly.

And we will not only know player roles, we will also know the score that will be built into future price changes. It’s enough to force our hand on any player from those teams. So while we’ve all made 300 changes to our starting squads over the pre-season, get ready to make more after the Opening Round.

SuperCoaches will get a look at value pick Brodie Grundy in Opening Round. Picture: Phil Hillyard

BYE ROUNDS

The hesitation of picking a player from the Opening Round, even after a strong performance, is that they will be missing for a round in the following six weeks.

However, that blow is softened by the fact that only your Best 18 scores will count for those rounds, and we have four extra trades.

The extra trades don’t change my view of the bye rounds. I wouldn’t be banking on those trades to ‘sideways’ trade player on their early bye. I think they are better off used to fast-track upgrading our squads come upgrade season, and hopefully allow you to be more aggressive with your starting squad.

Having said that, I’m not starting any player with an early bye who I think is fully priced. That is, players who are unlikely to improve on their 2023 output. My view is you might as well get the extra game out of an equivalent premium who isn’t missing a game early in the year.

It’s a different story with the value premiums, mid-pricers and rookies. If anything, there is more incentive to start with these players if they perform well in Opening Round as you’ll have a better idea of their role, scoring potential and cash generation than the equivalent value premiums, mid-prices and rookies without an early bye.

Josh Dunkley is a SuperCoach gun but is hard to pick this year when Brisbane has a bye in round 2. Picture: Russell Freeman/AFL Photos via Getty Images

The Best 18 certainly helps us pick these players. What I’m trying to work out is if it impacts the rest of my squad. I typically like to target value across my squad with the net effect meaning I can strengthen players 15-18 and have more secure rookies on my field. However, with Best 18, can you afford to save the cash on the bottom end and start with cheap rookies, given their scores might not count for four of the first six weeks anyway? Probably. But I’m sticking to what has worked for me the last two seasons.

They say don’t overreact to preseason. Well I’ve just adjusted 32 players.

📈
Alex Sexton
Charlie Lazzaro
Nic Martin
Connor Budarick
Tom Powell
James Harmes
Sam Durham

📉
Cam Guthrie
Ben Hobbs
Heath Chapman
Issac Cumming
Jy Simpkin

Full ranks at https://t.co/X5EyVBtPcz

— Moreira’s Magic (@MoreirasMagic) February 24, 2024

EXTRA TRADES

The extra trades will likely have the biggest impact of all changes, as I don’t think we will need them in the early bye rounds given it’s Best 18, so you can apply them across your whole season. As someone who has run out of trades with three rounds to go in the past, this is a welcome addition! So I’ll likely do what I’ve been doing and hope those extra trades will mean I don’t run out this year.

We’ve seen trades increase over the last few years and those who have been aggressive with them have been rewarded.

Only a few years ago, there were just 30 trades for the season. If you were lucky, 10 trades were used for injuries/forced trades, leaving just 20 for upgrading your team.

A typical upgrade requires two trades – one for trading out a cash cow to a new basement priced one, and the other for getting a cashed-up rookie up to a premium. This meant you could make 10 upgrades with your 20 trades if everything went right.

Noting the goal is to eventually own as many of the best players across each line to put the big scores on the board, the proven strategy was to start with at least 12 “keepers” and hope that your 10 upgrades would leave you with the 22 premiums required by the end of the season.

Starting a mid-pricer like Zac Williams who turns out to be a season-long keeper is the Holy Grail of SuperCoach. Picture: David Crosling

However, additional forced trades would leave you short of 22 keepers. This is why the common mentality was still to identify who would score the most in each line and start with them, regardless of price, as you might not get a chance to own them again. It was too risky starting with someone who wasn’t a top liner unless they were a rookie – that was mid-priced madness. Why start a player who isn’t going to be a keeper as it will cost you a trade for the inevitable upgrade, especially when you make more cash with a rookie?

There is a reason why this “guns-and-rookies” strategy was so successful and can still prove effective in modern SuperCoach, as the likelihood of a proven premium backing it up is much higher than a mid-pricer delivering.

In 2022 trades increased to 35, then 36 in 2023 and now 40 in 2024.

This has changed the game. Using the earlier assumption of 10 forced trades, that’s 30 trades we now have for upgrading. That means you could theoretically start the season with less than 12 “keepers” and still achieve a complete team by the end of the season. This gives a far greater licence to selecting mid-pricers in your starting squad. In fact, mid-pricers can be the key to success.

The downside of starting with a failed mid-pricer is far less as you can simply jump to a better alternative in the first few rounds if it doesn’t work out. Burning a trade doesn’t hurt as much these days, as you have so many more up your sleeve. And if it does pay off, as we saw with Ziebell and Setterfield last season and Cripps, Sicily, Hewett in 2022, then it can be game-changing.

The old school mentality is a safe play and proven to have merit. The new school mentality comes with the additional risk of trading aggressively and taking punts on less proven players in the pursuit of having a team of 22 premiums before everyone else.

Keep in mind as I say this I did run out of trades with four rounds to go last season, so there was egg on my face at the end. I went too hard the other way and I’m still searching for the best strategy for today’s SuperCoach. But I think the coach who finds the right balance between old and new school mentality will have success this season.

Follow Selby on X @MoreirasMagic

Originally published as Fantasy GOAT Selby Lee-Steere’s tips for adjusting to 2024 SuperCoach changes