How to Pick a Captain!

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LET’S GET INTO IT….

Go inside the mind of the greatest ever Fantasy captain picker to have every played the game. How does this awesome pirate do it and what does he look for each and every week?

🏴‍☠️ Opposition

There are three elements I used when looking at the opponent for the week: A players’ history against this team, their likelihood to tag and the points that this particular team have been giving up to players in each position.

History: Some players like playing certain teams. For whatever reason, they tend to score massive against some and not others. This could be due to tags, style of play etc… but don’t write off ‘confidence’ when playing teams you ‘like’. This is scoffed at by some content creators, but if you have ever played sport at a decent level… you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Nick Daicos has recent scores against the Power (his fourth hardest team) of 95, 95 and 86. But against the Eagles (his No. 1 favourite) he has gone 137, 131, 114 and 126. Prime example of a guy loving his opposition. He also only averages 97 against the Crows in his last three but 113 against the Dogs in his last three.

Tags: Hey… some teams do and some don’t. This can also be seen in the Scale of Hardness which I look at runs coming up and who might be tagged each week. This is updated weekly and can be seen at patreon.com/dttalk alongside the Scale of Hardness itself.

Let’s look at Zak Butters… back in 2023 and early 2024, Butters used to torch Geelong and he had scores of 128 and 130. Since then, it has been a very different story with scores of 34, 46 and 27* (32% time on ground – got injured). He also cops tags against the Blues… and as a result, Butters has failed to score over 100 against them in his last five games. Not what you want from a captain!

Scale: Richmond are the easiest example here – towards the end of the year they were giving up so many points to midfielders it wasn’t funny.

The last five teams to play the Tigers are listed below with the scores they gave up to midfielders during this time – obviously a team we target! On the flipside we don’t target those harder teams – so the scale is important for captain selection.

Most recent MIDs v RICH: Atkins 120, Smith 108… Sheezel 186, LDU 162, Parker 102… Windhager 133, Macrae 101, Steele 101… Anderson 123, Rowell 106

🏴‍☠️ Form

Possibly one of the main factors here… form of a player could be down due to their role, an injury so it needs to be weighted rather heavily when picking a captain.

Grundy went on a tear last year and his form was simply unbelievable and a lock for a VC or C each week. He went on a run of 134, 124, 139, 121, 137, 113, 126, 129, 130 and 150… all captain worthy scores over a ten week stretch. Crazy. Form like this can not be denied and other factors were just ignored.

Brayshaw on the other hand had a six week patch where something was wrong. Injured? New role? New style of play? Not sure, either way he knocked out 90, 82, 90, 76, 90 and 76 towards the end of the season… and he had West Coast during that patch. Not good!

🏴‍☠️ Ground

Not a huge factor for captains but it plays its part.

Over the last two years, Dayne Zorko has played at the MCG ten times for an average of 113.2. He loves this place and the big stage and always steps it up a notch. It’s also worth noting that he averaged 99.6 at the GABBA last year.

Jordan Dawson is an interesting one. He hates playing at the GABBA (warranted it is the Lions) but at the GABBA he has never scored 100-plus from seven games… but when he has played the Lions at home… he has scored 109 and 118 in his last two. He can score against them… but not at the GABBA.

🏴‍☠️ THE PIRATE’S FORMULA

Once every premium is studied and all the numbers are crunched for the 40-odd players I do each week, I write it all up, game-by-game for the legends at patreon.com/dttalk.  This takes me 3 hours a week and I do it all for you.

This goes up on Tuesday followed by my top-10 (Thursday). This helps you find the best vice captain and captain option each and every week.

✅ The best place to find all these stats is at dfsaustralia.com – these guys are the best, the GOATS, they show the stats, I analyse them for you, crunch them and give my take each and every week.

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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