Your 2018 Review

Status
Not open for further replies.
Career best overall for me this year.

Finishing Rank - 1748
Highest Round Rank - 606 (Rd 17)
Highest Season Rank - 941 (Rd 6)
Average Score - 2257
Total Score 51910
Achievements Never left the top 10k, the lowest rank I had was 9180.


View attachment 552472

Completed team:
View attachment 552476


View attachment 552498

Worse trades: Howe IN over the byes. Judd_Magic yes I fell for this one too.:'( The kent sat on the bench for feck all cover, had to play Tmac in his spot and the kent ultimately cost me when Buddy was a OUT in the Grand Finals.

Best trades: Cogs and Simpson IN Round 3 for Lobb and Crouch, honourable mentions Yeo IN round 7,
Buddy and Grundy also killed it once traded IN.

Overall, pretty stoked with my highest ever SC finish.

Cheers once again to the board for the info, advice, laughs and puppies....in saying that thank **** its over.
Bring on Summer:beercheers: See you splendid kents next year.:thumbsu:

1516933191358.jpg
 
Feb 5, 2018
13,936
33,319
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Chicago Blackhawks Melb Renegades
I like Gresh too. Do you think he'll be getting more mid time next year or think he can go premo playing mostly forward?

Yeah I see him playing mid midfield definitely. It was what caught my eye about him during the season. The Saints had a fair few marquee slots so was easy to watch them play. Noticed Gresh getting more and more midfield time then noticed he was scoring 80's and 100's quite consistently. With another pre season under his belt i'd say he can do this more often. Just hope he keeps that mid/forward status. If he gets mid only I won't bother with him though.
 
Sep 3, 2005
34,977
100,769
Adelaide
AFL Club
West Coast
Other Teams
Baghdad Bombers
Yeah I see him playing mid midfield definitely. It was what caught my eye about him during the season. The Saints had a fair few marquee slots so was easy to watch them play. Noticed Gresh getting more and more midfield time then noticed he was scoring 80's and 100's quite consistently. With another pre season under his belt i'd say he can do this more often. Just hope he keeps that mid/forward status. If he gets mid only I won't bother with him though.
If Acres and Billings leave Greesh will feast on the ball in my forward line from round 1
 
Dec 3, 2017
17,127
55,150
AFL Club
Melbourne
If only we were mathematicians with psychic powers. :rainbow:

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/...r/news-story/7114f1a9d11643a9abfb774ae9ae174f

The Optimal SuperCoach 2018 team would have scored 11,000 more points than the overall winner
Steven Edwards, Herald Sun

ANOTHER season over, another empty stare off into the distance.

Congratulations to those SuperCoaches who won their leagues. Most of all though, congratulations to Cole of the winning team CharCole Chicken, who took home the $50k with an impressive score of 51,102.

For those of us who were raised in a generation of looking up the answers in the back of the textbook, saying “congratulations” and walking away doesn’t quite scratch the itch. I blame the information age for my absolute need for closure.

So please sit back and allow yourself to be indulged in some SuperCoach over-analysis one last time for the year.

With a whopping 62,208 points, we present the Optimal SuperCoach Team for the 2018 season. All the correct trades, captain selections and position choices required to obtain the theoretically highest score possible.
STARTING TEAM

DEFENCE

Kade Simpson ($516,300), Rory Laird ($550,800), James Sicily ($402,800), Luke Ryan ($422,300), Jeremy Finlayson ($123,900), Tom Doedee ($123,900)

Bench: Sam Murray ($123,900), David Mirra ($102,400)

MIDFIELD

Tom Mitchell ($653,500), Stephen Coniglio ($452,400), Jack Macrae ($587,800), Tim Kelly ($117,300), Nick Holman ($102,400), Ed Curnow ($473,200), Jaeger O’Meara ($315,800), Cam Ellis-Yolmen ($263,900)

Bench: Paul Seedsman ($300,200), Nat Fyfe ($597,900), Jake Brown ($102,400)

RUCKS

Max Gawn ($503,700), Brodie Grundy ($534,700)

Bench: Tom Jeffries ($102,400)

FORWARDS

Justin Westhoff ($479,600), Brandon Parfitt ($295,500), Zac Fisher ($263,600), Toby McLean ($470,200), Jack Darling ($397,900), Jesse Hogan ($383,200)

Bench: Bayley Fritsch ($117,300), Liam Ryan ($117,300)

ROUND BY ROUND

R1 score: 2558. Captain: Tom Mitchell 167. Trades: Nil.

R2 score: 2747. Captain: Tom Mitchell 148. Trades: Nil.

R3 score: 2539. Captain: Nat Fyfe 160. Trades: Nil.

R4 score: 2627. Captain: Brandan Parfitt 168. Trades: Tom Mitchell, Liam Ryan OUT. Mitch Robinson, Ben Brown IN.

R5 score: 2626. Captain: Max Gawn 151. Trades: Stephen Coniglio, Jaeger O’Meara OUT, Harris, Andrews Patrick Cripps IN.

R6 score: 2633. Captain: Max Gawn 168. Trades: Brandan Parfitt, Ben Brown OUT, Lachie Neale, Jack Redden IN.

R7 score: 2813. Captain: Jack Macrae 189. Trades: Sam Murray, Jeremy Finlayson OUT, Dayne Zorko, Angus Brayshaw IN

R8 score: 2738. Captain: Jack Macrae 156. Trades: Paul Seedsman, Zac Fisher OUT, Tom McDonald, Jake Lloyd IN.

R9 score: 2834. Captain: Jack Darling 181. Trades: Ed Curnow, Cam Ellis-Yolmen OUT, Tom Hawkins, Tom Mitchell IN.

R10 score: 2754. Captain: Mitch Robinson 172. Trades: Jack Macrae, Jack Darling OUT, Patrick Dangerfield, Callan Ward IN.

R11 score: 2632. Captain: Tom McDonald 164. Trades: David Mirra, Toby McLean OUT, Clayton Oliver, Lance Franklin IN.

R12 score: 2245. Captain: Callan Ward 156. Trades: Mitch Robinson, Dayne Zorko, Nick Holman OUT. Josh Kelly, Ollie Wines, Chad Wingard IN.

R13 score: 2302. Captain: Lachie Neale 159. Trades: Harris Andrews, Tim Kelly, Bayley Fritsch OUT. Luke Breust, Seb Ross, Elliot Yeo IN.

R14 score: 2283. Captain: Patrick Cripps 187. Trades: Nat Fyfe, Ollie Wines OUT. Dayne Beams, Scott Pendlebury IN.

R15 score: 2839. Captain: Tom Mitchell 181. Trades: James Sicily, Jake Brown

OUT. Jack Riewoldt, Jason Johannisen IN.

R16 score: 2927. Captain: Luke Breust 165. Trades: Nil.

R17 score: 2772. Captain: Tom Mitchell 159. Trades: Nil.

R18 score: 2783. Captain: Tom Mitchell 192. Trades: Luke Ryan, Jack Redden OUT. Sam Menegola, Josh Dunkley IN.

R19 score: 2862. Captain: Patrick Cripps 173. Trades: Nil.

R20 score: 3196. Captain: Josh Kelly 205. Trades: Luke Breust OUT. Jack Gunston IN.

R21 score: 2805. Captain: Jack Riewoldt 219. Trades: Jesse Hogan OUT. Lachie Hunter IN.

R 22 score: 2972. Captain: Brodie Grundy 162. Trades: Nil.

R23 score: 2721. Captain: Brodie Grundy 148. Trade: Nil.

SOME OBSERVATIONS

1. Some big names were not required this year

Popular choices such as Dustin Martin, Gary Ablett, Robbie Gray and Joel Selwood never appear in the optimal side.

2. Max Gawn and Brodie Grundy take a bow

For those who had Gawn, Grundy and a loophole rookie in the rucks such as Tom Jeffries here — or more commonly Tony Olango — you will not need to be told that this was the optimal strategy this year. What a delight to see an entire position that does not require a single trade or rotation for the season. The All-Australian team truly did deserve a second on-field ruck spot this year.

3. Pre-season analysis got a lot right

Many teams included players such as Sicily, McLean, Fisher, Holman, Doedee and Tim Kelly for Round 1. It is validating to seem them here in the Optimal Team. Doedee deserves a special mention as it turns out that in his first season in the AFL he was a lock in defence for the entire season. Some high scores both early and late in the year ensured that the Optimal Team never traded him out.

4. The All-Australian selectors don’t play SuperCoach

Despite the clear choice of Gawn and Grundy in the All-Australian Team, two of the optimal team’s locks for the season Justin Westhoff and Kade Simpson did not even make the 40-man squad.

On the other hand, it is no surprise that Tom Mitchell is such short favourite for the Brownlow. He was chosen as captain an impressive five times, three more than any other player.

Interestingly, perhaps to ensure that Mitchell did not get overly confident, the Optimal Team trades him out in Round 4 only to trade him back in five weeks later.

5. The trading around the byes is very interesting

Rory Laird was another lock for the season, which is somewhat surprising given the poor timing of his injury during the bye rounds (Rounds 12, 13 and 14). To get around this the Optimal Team uses some savvy trading around the byes.

Notice how two Port Adelaide players — Wines and Wingard — are recruited in Round 12 given their earlier bye in Round 10. This concept of using many trades to skip players over the byes was a popular trading strategy among many coaches this year and it’s validating to see it being replicated by the Optimal Team here.

6. Hindsight can be quite arrogant at times

You would have to be a brave individual to spend almost $600k to pick Nat Fyfe in your starting team only to leave him on the pine for Round 1 behind rookies Tim Kelly and Nick Holman.

Yet it turns out with Fyfe’s 75 to start the season that is exactly where he belonged.

Who needs cash cows when you can cash in in-form premiums? Jack Macrae started the season with some serious heat, increasing in price almost $140,000 in the first 10 rounds. The Optimal team then cashes in and downgrades Macrae to Patrick Dangerfield before Macrae’s hamstring injury saw most of that price increase vanish a few rounds later.

It also shows how nice it would be to know when the key forwards are going to make big scores. Ben Brown, the only Kangaroo who appears in the team, is brought into the team in Round 4 and traded out two rounds later. Likewise, having Jack Riewoldt as captain in for his 219-point demolition of Gold Coast would have been pretty handy.

7. Who is Jake Brown?

Perhaps my favourite outcome of this year’s Optimal Team is the surprise inclusion of young Jake Brown from Sydney, who was included in the team for the first 14 rounds of the season. Brown would probably be surprised by this himself given he has never actually played an AFL game.

What might help explain this inclusion is that Brown held MID/FWD dual-position eligibility and was also the cheapest possible price, $102,400, at the start of the season.

Although you can’t see it in the summary presented here, Brown was swung between midfield and forward benches five times throughout the season to ensure the best possible players were on the ground. I am sure his AFL career will flourish after this quality experience in the optimal team.

For those who are interested, in order to a do this analysis I use a branch of mathematics called Mixed Integer Programming, or Mathematical Programming. The aim of this field is to develop ways of solving problems where you have to make a number of decisions while trying to maximise or minimise some objective.

I think we would all agree that solving fantasy football competitions retrospectively is a very important problem for society to answer. It just so happens that there are many other almost equally important applications such as routing cars, planes and trucks more efficiently, making better use of resources in hospitals and creating fairer working rosters.

As a side experiment, this year my brother and I were plugging in the projections provided by SuperCoach into the optimiser to make our decisions. At the end of Round 15 we were ranked in the top 250 teams before trailing off and finishing outside the top 5000. It really goes to show that with injuries and suspension SuperCoach will always be a game of luck.

Hopefully we will be developing a better forecaster over the off-season, so if everything goes to plan keep an eye out for team Marcus Bontempelli next year.

Steven is a PhD Candidate in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University and works on large-scale optimisation problems
 
If only I had benched Fyfe in Rd1 and started Holman instead, I could have been a contender. :(

I also refuse to accept that Luke Ryan stayed in the optimal team all year, that campaigner killed my season.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back