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2020 Hindsight Heroes

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Baked Beams looks at how you could have won AFL Fantasy Classic by 5,210 points.

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!

RDSCORE
(ACTUAL TOP)
CAPTAINTOTAL SCORELEADING BYTEAM VALUE
(REM SALARY)
TRADES
12019
(1794)
Grundy
114
2019225$12,968,000
($32,000)
21986
(1883)
Goldstein
127
4005452$13,192,000
($324,000)
S.Sturt > L.Vandermeer
S.Naismith > M.Pittonet
B.Grundy > T.Goldstein
31947
(1862)
Sidebottom
126
5952600$14,200,000
($142,000)
T.Brown > S.Simpson
T.Goldstein > B.Grundy
41891
(1844)
Neale
123
7843846$15,127,000
($153,000)
S.Sidebottom > L.Whitfield
A.Gaff > J.Lyons
B.Smith (WB) > J.Lloyd
51943
(1774)
Gawn
131
97861283$16,014,000
($62,000)
J.Brander > W.Day
J.Howe > C.Oliver
M.Rowell > H.Greenwood
61892
(1861)
Whitfield
108
116781454$16,388,000
($268,000)
J.McInerney > I.Rankine
C.Wingard > J.Sicily
71916
(1883)
Grundy
119
135941669$16,781,000
($65,000)
A.Saad > Z.Bailey
B.Starcevich > A.McPherson
82001
(1932)
Oliver
125
155952027$17,425,000
($479,000)
C.Taylor > J.Macrae
C.Budarick > C.Serong
A.Corr > S.McAdam
92017
(1919)
Whitfield
119
176122323$17,981,000
($411,000)
M.Pittonet > D.Cameron
B.Bewley > M.Duncan
L.Vandermeer > L.McDonald
102039
(1887)
Oliver
131
196512551$18,454,000
($410,000)
M.Gawn > R.Marshall
S.Simpson > M.Crouch
J.Sicily > R.Laird
112268
(2047)
Laird
139
219163047$19,000,000
($155,000)
S.Docherty > M.Bontempelli
N.Anderson > A.Brayshaw (FRE)
D.Butler > T.Hawkins
122152
(2049)
Bontempelli
145
240683265$19,604,000
($51,000)
D.Cameron > S.Draper
R.Marshall > R.O'Brien
C.Serong > T.Mitchell
132177
(2048)
Merrett
125
262453658$19,874,000
($54,000)
I.Rankine > J.Riccardi
M.King > Z.Merrett
A.McPherson > D.Greaves
142127
(2120)
Merrett
122
283723842$19,866,000
($325,000)
J.Simpkin > K.Langford
M.Pickett > T.Rivers
Z.Bailey > J.Crisp
152114
(1883)
Crisp
121
304864174$19,974,000
($630,000)
L.McDonald > T.Stewart
W.Day > D.Rich
A.Brayshaw (FRE) > B.Acres
162196
(2046)
Crouch
125
326854511$20,219,000
($495,000)
J.Lyons > L.Hunter
J.Ridley > T.Rockliff
N.Haynes > C.Daniel
172208
(1998)
Daniel
128
348934902$20,446,000
($610,000)
M.Duncan > Jp.Kennedy
J.Riccardi > T.Lynch (ADE)
T.Hawkins > T.Liberatore
182308
(2138)
Adams
120
372015210$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




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