You’ve spent hours planning, preparing and trying out different structures that could potentially land you the prime starting squad. As important as it is the team you eventually role into the season with won’t be the thing that wins you the top ranking.
Nailing the cash cows, picking the premiums that fire and being on the right breakout candidates are all essential steps on the way to rankings glory, but just because you nail the starting squad, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be in prime position ready to win it all.
You can have two different coaches with identical starting sides but by seasons end finish miles apart, why?
Your season is won and lost based on the trades you make in the season.
The trades you make both the upgrades, downgrades plus their timing are critical ingredients to fantasy footy success. The correct execution of these is what takes you from being an above average fantasy scorer to put yourself into contention for the title.
While it’s probably dangerous to ask, how many do hours tinkering with your starting squad have you spent? As important as that is, the moves you make post round one are vastly more critical.
How much time have you spent thinking about your team beyond round one?
In one of the many jobs in life, I’ve had one of them was as a wedding celebrant. I’d often encourage couples as they prepared for their wedding day that a lasting marriage isn’t going to happen just because of what happened on the day you started. While it’s essential to prepare for the wedding ceremony, don’t spend all your energy on that and fail to plan for a life together.
While your fantasy side has nominal importance to your real life, the principle remains true. Don’t spend all your time preparing for ‘Day One’ of the fantasy season and not think about what happens beyond day two.
What pre-planning have you done for who you plan to trade in and when you plan to do it? For example, with Josh Kelly failing to play in the JLT Series he becomes someone, that I cannot have in my starting squad. However, before the season is out, I will want him. Given his scoring calibre, I can’t trade him in after his round 14 bye because I’ll only then get nine possible matches out of him and by then the scoring damage could well have been done.
As I look at the Giants fixture after a difficult opening month of opponents of Essendon, West Coast, Richmond & Geelong it opens up dramatically with games against Fremantle, Sydney, St Kilda, Hawthorn, Carlton, Melbourne and Gold Coast in round 11.
Therefore, to maximise the full fixture run I need to plan at trading Josh Kelly into my side by round 5. That means I’ll need to make either a quick upgrade trade from a stepping stone with just a few price rises or Make multiple aggressive cash cow culls to get the money required.
Yes, injuries can happen, and plans can change, but the point of this article is to remind coaches that you need to spend time planning, preparing and then executing the right trades in the season to put yourself in contention to win it all.
The best use of your time between now and round one isn’t on getting starting squad utopia, but rather is targeting who and when you’ll be making you upgrade trades in season. The quicker you can fill your side with premiums the more likely you are to be in contention.
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