AFL Premium Dream Team Draft Strategy
At face value, correct strategy for the upcoming AFL Premium Dream Team Live Draft appears simple enough. When it’s your turn - grab the player likely to score you the most points. You have no salary cap to worry about - points is your number one priority.
If only it were that simple.
The requirements to have players at each position means you need to take a more sophisticated strategy into draft night. Let’s look at an example to illustrate this.
You are contemplating whether to take Dean Cox, who is averaging 6 points more than Jeff White, his nearest rival ruck, or Gary Ablett, who is averaging 5 points more than his nearest midfield rival Joel Corey.
You decide to compare them, and find Corey is averaging 5 points a game more than Cox, so you decide that Corey is going to be your selection. Sounds logical right? Sorry, but you’ve got it completely wrong.
By taking Ablett, you might be getting the highest scorer in the game. But your opponent can select Corey next, and guess what - he’s only going to be 5 points behind you, on average. If you took Cox instead, your opponent’s next best ruck option would be White, meaning he’s going to be 6 points behind you at that position - a very small improvement, but the edge will get greater the further down you go.
Let’s look at the players ranked 10th at their positions. Brad Green is currently the 10th ranked midfielder, averaging 99 points per game - you’ll notice that is only 6 points per game behind Cox, so you could be excused for thinking their value is similar. This is far from the truth as we’ll soon see. Green is only averaging 13 less than Ablett - so you are not far behind if you wait a bit to take your first midfielder.
Let’s look at the 10th ranked ruckman - Justin Koschitze. The Saint averages about 69 points per game - a whopping 34 points behind Cox. Look at that difference if you wait a while to take your first ruckman, compared to your first midfielder - a massive 21 points on average for just one player! And things just keep getting worse the further you go down.
See why Dean Cox will be the number 1 pick for any serious player in this draft?
The same theory works for selecting your backs and forwards - especially down back. Studs such as Chad Cornes and Heath Shaw are few and far between in defence, so their value is relatively higher than those dime-a-dozen midfielders. Hopefully you are seeing now that selecting Rucks, Backs, and to a lesser extent Forwards, early on is where you will gain your edge over your opponents.
If you’re still not convinced - let’s look at these numbers. The following table shows the number of players that need to be selected at each position, and the number who actually played in Round 7 this year:
| Position | To Be Picked | Played In Rd 7 |
| Rucks | 20 | 30 |
| Backs | 70 | 110 |
| Forwards | 70 | 98 |
| Midfielders | 60 | 147 |
Looking at that - you can see you don’t have a great margin for ever when it comes to the first 3 positions - while there is a huge pool of midfielders to choose from. Again this will impact your strategy - the standard in the first 3 positions will drop off rather quickly, so if you can get in early to grab as best you can, there will be a plethora of handy midfielders for you to swoop on late in the draft.
With all that said, of course you need to be mindful of your team structure. Over the first 5 rounds, I would suggest you take one player at each position, with the extra selection being another Back or Forward. While you should get as good a ruckman as possible early, if you leave your second one until your last pick the worst you can do is number 20, so you should keep that in mind.
OK - to finish off, let’s take a look at some recommended selections at each position:
Rucks - Dean Cox, Jeff White, Troy Simmonds, Aaron Sandilands, David Hille, Darren Jolly
Backs - Chad Cornes, Heath Shaw, Jake King, Nathan Bock
Forwards - Matthew Richardson, Matthew Pavlich, Jonathon Brown appears to be hitting his straps, Buddy Franklin
Midfielders - Gary Ablett, Joel Corey, James Bartel, Dane Swan, Matt Priddis
To conclude things - always keep in mind that the key to the Premium Draft is scarcity at different positions, so be on the look out to snap up that player with a big edge over the rest of the players remaining at his position. Also, the draft is going to run for over 3 hours - so be prepared, stay focused, and you’ll come out the other end with a team everyone is jealous of!
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Hey boys, glad I stumbled on this before Thursday, wasn’t quite aware of the value of those big ruckmans - looks like i wont be the goose in my league who lets big coxy fall to someone else!!!