Cal’s Scale of Hardness – First Edition

G’day legends! Welcome to the first edition of Cal’s Scale of Hardness for 2025!

What’s the Scale of Hardness?

Simply put, it’s an essential tool (used by Darren Carr, winner of the 2023 HiLux) that helps you gauge the upcoming challenges for a team or player.

Whether the run ahead looks tough (red) or smooth sailing (green… easy), this scale is a valuable guide for decisions like trades, captains, and most importantly, setting up your team for 2025 to get off to a flying start. Just like some did with Tom Green last year when he opened with easy games against the Kangaroos (scored 145) and West Coast (scored 120).

How are the colours assigned?

I gather data from a variety of sources to rank teams based on the points they gave up last season. The colours you see here are reflective of how many points teams gave up in 2024.

But here’s the twist: I don’t just look at the whole year in isolation. I also consider how teams performed toward the end of the season. Teams that allowed a lot of points are marked in green, while tougher teams tend to show up in red.

Can you give an example?

Absolutely! Last year, we targeted certain teams and also targeted them for captain options as well.

Let’s have a look at a few match-ups we targeted and how players went against them in the last few rounds of 2024.

✅ DEFs v GCS = Rioli 123, Langford 140, Martin 127, Duggan 114
✅ MIDs v RICH = Anderson 126, Rowell 122, Flanders 111… Newc 122, Moore 119
✅ RUCs v WCE = Stanley 115, Pittonet 95, Xerri 168, Witts 148

As you can see, the match-up mean everything! At the same time avoiding MIDs v Hawks who only allowed 3 MIDs to score 100-plus against them in the last 9 weeks. During this time, we saw failures from ❌ Taranto 68, ❌ Walsh 89, ❌ Cripps 81, ❌ Green 84, ❌ Daicos 87, ❌ Serong 88 and ❌Brayshaw 84 just to main a few.

You get the picture… this scale is the shit!

What does PATREON offer?

The Scale is updated every week for our Patreon legends over at patreon.com/dttalk, taking into account how teams have performed throughout the season.

Each update is accompanied by an indepth article, players to target/avoid, a 10 round image for each position (like below, but the one below isn’t real) and a downloadable file (the full year Scale itself) all ready for you to dive into every week.

On the DT Talk site, there will be a version of the Scale published monthly. However, they only show data for five rounds at a time, with a modified article and no downloads.

The downloadable file also has a ‘tag watch’ component to it that is also updated weekly. An small example is below.

THERE’S STILL MORE…

Seriously… you get all that for $10 a month and then you get all that and all the rest…. Buy us a beer, support us in our 19th year of creating this, cause man I’m thristy!

PRE-SEASON CONTENT (it’s there now)

• 📘The Playbook – 180 relevant players covered. 2024 team CBAs, Kick-ins, Ruck contests, Scale of Hardness…
• 👓 Early Best-23’s, predictions from a variety of sources in one place.
• 🏃‍♂️ Track Watch – over 3300 words covering all teams this pre-season. Elite content.
• 🍺 Pint Casts (Podcasts Q&A)
• 📈 Cal’s Scale of Hardness (in depth artcile and full scale)
• 💪 Roy’s Rollin’ 22 (first edition)

IN-SEASON CONTENT (coming soon)

• 💪 Roy’s Rollin’ 22 (updated weekly)
• 📈 Cal’s Scale of Hardness (updated weekly)
• 🍺 Pint Cast (Q&A Wednesday podcast)
• 🏴‍☠️ Calvin’s Captains – extended version (Tuesday)
• 🏴‍☠️ Calvin’s Captains – Top 10 (Thursday)
• 📺 Sunday night LIVE show – including green vest punishments (headshake)
• 💰 Exclusive competitions ($$$ up for grabs)
• 🧴 Access to Team Awesome Sauce (elite intel from highly credible sources)
• 💬 Access to the DT Talk Chat

Thanks to all those who have bought us a beer – it is greatly appreciated and give us the time to create bigger and better content than ever before.

DEFENDERS

With only Richmond and the Suns list as ‘mega easy’ there isn’t anything massive obvious here with DEFs with a standout easy run. With that said, there are three ‘mega hard’ teams so we can look who avoids them.

Carlton have a nice start and don’t meet a tricky team for some time. Ollie Hollands and maybe even Sam Docherty (providing they’re in defence) along with Lachie Whitfield should find it easy going early on, with Whitfield a player we need to target stright after his bye.

MIDFIELDERS

The biggest standout here is the early run for Port Adelaide who meet Collingwood, Richmond and Essendon in the first three games. The obvious focus here is on Butters, Rozee and whether or not we start with Horne-Bag and can they get the boost we want at the very start of the year. My gut feel is we need at least one/two of these guys from the first bounce.

Expect Noah Anderson and his Gold Coast friends to score well in the OR at home and then create a conversation about… do we now squeeze them in and ride out the round 2 bye. They will turn into a big watch, with a juicy run.

RUCKS

Man I would have liked Sean Darcy to be fit with the nice little early run he has… but as we’ve discussed at length, the Freo rucks are probably now in the ‘too hard basket’ and should be avoided, unless you’re brave and like the play of Luke Jackson.

Tom DeKoning is another that should get off to a flying start but that’s on the condition that he is solo without Pittonet.

For those pivoting to Max Gawn, firstly I like the move. But last year against his first opponents he scored 79 (GWS), 98 (NTH), DNP (SUNS) and 92 (GEEL). Take out of that what you please…

FORWARDS

We shouldn’t be picking ‘key forwards’ in our team and therefore over at our patreon this section is mainly used by draft players only. Remember, we should be picking FWDs that play in the middle (or down back) where they will be scoring more points.

Calvin

Do you need a Captain? Then Calvin will help you out. Don't want a Captain? Calvin will tell you anyway. The man who digs deep into stats will help you pick a great captain and give you plenty of Fantasy advice. Follow him on Twitter: @CalvinDT