2020 Hindsight Heroes

Everyone loves a bit of hindsight. “If only I picked Hunter over Macrae… I should’ve fielded Greaves over Haynes last week…” We’ve all said something like that before, but what if you actually had these powers? So what if you could actually go back and change things? Well, here we go.

If you picked the following team at the start of the year and made appropriate trades, you would have won AFL Fantasy by 5210 points. 5 thousand. Along the way, you would pick up the round prize every week for the highest scoring team and have a team value over $2mil more than the actual highest, at $20.7mil. Not to mention a cool $679k still in the bank.

ROUND 1 TEAM

Before I get on with the team, here are some takeaways:

1. Coronaball made it a harder challenge to plan around, but overall, consistent players were the go. The team never had someone miss for a “managed” out, only long term injuries causing forced trades.
2. Rookies are vital. Apart from early rounds, almost every week the team had everyone on the bench playing. This allowed for maximum cash generation, and cover for when things go wrong. Of course, with hindsight you can field rookies over premiums, but even without the benefits are huge with a full bench.
3. Chase value. The premise of this team is basically inflating the team salary to a point where you can do whatever trades you please. Chasing cheaper options who will make buckets of cash like L.McDonald, Z.Bailey, D.Butler, B.Bewley are all key factors to this team succeeding. Most of the time they were only 50-100k more than a fattened rookie and when trading, were only 50k off an uber premo themselves.
4. Premiums on bench. Towards the final month, it got to the point where I had 2-3 premiums on the bench. Not because rookies were outscoring them, but because I could afford it. This allowed for off games, or bad matchups and tags, as you could just bench them for a better matchup.
5. Sideways trading actually works. Only 10 genuine upgrades happened over the year, opposed to 24 sideways trades. The others being 14 rookie downgrades. You often get criticise for doing too much sideways trading, but the strategy works. Obviously hindsight makes it easier to say this, but it has merit.

!DOWNLOAD THE SPREADSHEET VIA THIS LINK TO VIEW A MORE EXPANDED BREAKDOWN!

RD	SCORE (ACTUAL TOP)	CAPTAIN	TOTAL SCORE	LEADING BY	TEAM VALUE (REM SALARY)	TRADES
1	2019 (1794)	Grundy 114	2019	225	$12,968,000 ($32,000)
2	1986 (1883)	Goldstein 127	4005	452	$13,192,000 ($324,000)	S.Sturt > L.Vandermeer S.Naismith > M.Pittonet B.Grundy > T.Goldstein
3	1947 (1862)	Sidebottom 126	5952	600	$14,200,000 ($142,000)	T.Brown > S.Simpson T.Goldstein > B.Grundy
4	1891 (1844)	Neale 123	7843	846	$15,127,000 ($153,000)	S.Sidebottom > L.Whitfield A.Gaff > J.Lyons B.Smith (WB) > J.Lloyd
5	1943 (1774)	Gawn 131	9786	1283	$16,014,000 ($62,000)	J.Brander > W.Day J.Howe > C.Oliver M.Rowell > H.Greenwood
6	1892 (1861)	Whitfield 108	11678	1454	$16,388,000 ($268,000)	J.McInerney > I.Rankine C.Wingard > J.Sicily
7	1916 (1883)	Grundy 119	13594	1669	$16,781,000 ($65,000)	A.Saad > Z.Bailey B.Starcevich > A.McPherson
8	2001 (1932)	Oliver 125	15595	2027	$17,425,000 ($479,000)	C.Taylor > J.Macrae C.Budarick > C.Serong A.Corr > S.McAdam
9	2017 (1919)	Whitfield 119	17612	2323	$17,981,000 ($411,000)	M.Pittonet > D.Cameron B.Bewley > M.Duncan L.Vandermeer > L.McDonald
10	2039 (1887)	Oliver 131	19651	2551	$18,454,000 ($410,000)	M.Gawn > R.Marshall S.Simpson > M.Crouch J.Sicily > R.Laird
11	2268 (2047)	Laird 139	21916	3047	$19,000,000 ($155,000)	S.Docherty > M.Bontempelli N.Anderson > A.Brayshaw (FRE) D.Butler > T.Hawkins
12	2152 (2049)	Bontempelli 145	24068	3265	$19,604,000 ($51,000)	D.Cameron > S.Draper R.Marshall > R.O'Brien C.Serong > T.Mitchell
13	2177 (2048)	Merrett 125	26245	3658	$19,874,000 ($54,000)	I.Rankine > J.Riccardi M.King > Z.Merrett A.McPherson > D.Greaves
14	2127 (2120)	Merrett 122	28372	3842	$19,866,000 ($325,000)	J.Simpkin > K.Langford M.Pickett > T.Rivers Z.Bailey > J.Crisp
15	2114 (1883)	Crisp 121	30486	4174	$19,974,000 ($630,000)	L.McDonald > T.Stewart W.Day > D.Rich A.Brayshaw (FRE) > B.Acres
16	2196 (2046)	Crouch 125	32685	4511	$20,219,000 ($495,000)	J.Lyons > L.Hunter J.Ridley > T.Rockliff N.Haynes > C.Daniel
17	2208 (1998)	Daniel 128	34893	4902	$20,446,000 ($610,000)	M.Duncan > Jp.Kennedy J.Riccardi > T.Lynch (ADE) T.Hawkins > T.Liberatore
18	2308 (2138)	Adams 120	37201	5210	$20,664,000 ($679,000)	T.Rivers > D.Houston S.McAdam > J.Gunston C.Oliver > J.Simpkin

So, there you have it. A team 5210 points ahead. As mentioned earlier, sideways trading carried this team through.

TRADE BREAKDOWN

Sideways: 24
Upgrades: 10
Downgrades: 14

Having only 10 genuine upgrades you would think would make it hard to have six $500k+ players on the bench, but those sideways trades from rookies to value picks made the difference.

Only 4 players were not traded out of the team, Neale, Adams, Grundy, Petracca, outlining the amazing seasons they had. Simpkin was brought back in for the final round, so he can somewhat count. Overall, 76 different players were used.

FINAL TEAM

Ah, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

– Baked Beams ✌️

@baked_beams on Twitter