The delicate balancing act of Supercoach

A brand new AFL season is upon us, which can only mean one thing. It’s finally time than to dust off those computer screens and learn how to play fantasy football all over again.

Given that it’s inadvisable to nominate players before the NAB Cup has even begun, my first offering on this topic will cover the overarching concept of return on investment.

More than anything else Supercoach is about maximising your return on investment.

As a general rule you want your players hit the magic 100 points per week. Across 22 players, including double points for the captain, that will give you 2,300 points for your team in any one round.

If you can sustain 2,300 points per round for a whole season, more often than not, you will win your league.

Each round you are trying to break at least 2,000 points, which gives you a chance of at least winning the head-to-head game in any given round.

Every entrant starts the season with a salary cap of $10,000,000. If we reduce that figure to thousands (i.e. 10,000) then earning 2,000 points means a minimum 20% return on investment.

As you start establishing your team at the start of the season, you will note that the prices of players are fixed at just below the 20% return on investment benchmark.

For example, Gary Ablett averaged 127.1 last season and he is priced at $689,000, meaning the rate of return is 18.45%. Joel Corey averaged 96.21 last season, and is at a price of $521,600 which is also a rate of return of 18.45%.

In other words, if you are able to select players who can get their points to a 20+% return on investment, then you are well on the way to a high scoring team.

But there is a complication. You have to spread that $10,000,000 investment over 30 players, at an average price of $333,333 per player.

The significance of this is that you can’t merely purchase 30 players at a price of $333,333 apiece and aim for an average of 66 points per player per week (at a 20% return on investment).

Why? Because you can only field 22 out of 30 players, therefore you would only be scoring 22 times 66 (plus an additional 66 points). That gives you a measly 1,518 points – a one way ticket to the wooden spoon.

Nor can you fill the 22 spots with $500,000 players that are more likely to be able to give you your 100+ point average. That will obviously break the salary cap!

What this means is that you must aim to have around ten first year rookies, mostly around the range of $94,000 to $113,200 a pop, to release enough coin to spread across the elite players who are going to earn you the big points per week.

Let us assume that you purchase ten rookies at an average cost of $103,600, which comes to a spend of $1,036,000.

That leaves $8,964,000 to spread across 20 players, at an average cost of $448,200.

I’ve done this exercise purely to demonstrate two points.
1. $448,200 is not going to get you many elite players (if any); and
2. getting a 20% return on that sort of cost will only deliver you 90 points per player – not good enough!

The moral of the story is that if you want ten elite players, at around 550 points a pop, who are capable of guaranteeing you 110+ points per week every week (including your captain) then you also must find another ten players at around 350 points. These players must deliver you over the odds in terms of return on investment – say at least 25% – otherwise, you cannot hope to compete.

Failing that, you need to up the number of rookies to buy more elite players.

Your $250,000 to $350,000 type player is often a risky range.

This is because you are either talking about a second year player or a player who is a perennial low scorer.

To add to that risk, why invest $350,000 in a player who might deliver you 70 points per game, when there are first year rookies out there at a third of the cost who will deliver you 60 points per game, giving you a return on investment of 60%.

This is the great balancing act in Supercoach: identify those cheap rookies who will give you a high return on investment, in terms of both weekly points and resale value (hello GWS), and stockpile those elites who will guarantee you 110+ points per week, every week.

As we get closer to the first round you will get a good idea of those rookies likely to play and they are the ones you want in your team. This is because they serve the dual purpose of providing you with cheap cover, while allowing you to invest in more elite players. Not to mention, they’re also the ones likely to land you big profits later in the season.

In amongst all that, you have the bargains that come about from players returning from injury or mature age draftees.

But that’s a subject for another day.