TooSerious

One thing that is going to be on everyones mind- particularly with the GC missing round 1, is how exactly will the GC be lining up!

While the NAB should answer a few questions, its nice to see that the intra-club match was of the probables vs possibles variety.

Red (Probables): Jarrod Harbrow; Alik Magin; K. Hunt; N. Krakouer; Josh Fraser; Trent McKenzie; Josh Toy; Daniel Harris; Charlie Dixon; David Swallow; Danny Stanley; Matt Shaw; Campbell Brown; Brandon Matera; Michael Rischtelli; Sam Iles; Harley Bennell; Seb Tape.

White (Possibles): Marc Lock; Mav Weller; Luke Russell; Lewis Moss; Joey Daye; Tom Nicholls; Michael Coad; Roland Ah Chee; Taylor Hine; Jack Stanley; Rex Liddy; Jack Hutchins; Dion Prestia; Liam Patrick; Daniel Gorringe; Jacob Gilbee; Jake Crawford; Jeff White.

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DNP- Gaz, Brennan, Bock, Caddy, Day, May, Taylor, Lynch, Smith, Flanagan, Wilkinson, Ablett

So in that probables team, a couple will be coming out to make room for Gaz, Brennan, Bock and maybe Caddy, Day and Smith.

Firstly, the worries- Ive seen Coad in a lot of teams (including mine!) This certainly isnt very assuring of him keeping that spot. That said, Danny Stanley performed well, and was the 5th highest SuperCoach scorer for the Gold Coast last year- so it could be worth a lookin.

Smith sitting the game out isnt great, but with any luck, well see what he can do next weekend.

Prestia is also one that could mess up a few teams. Im suprised that hes not getting a call up as I thought he looked fantastic leading up to the draft. Maybe hes not big enough to get the call up with so many young ones running around?

Early suprise package, Marc Lock doesnt look likely- even though hes in the leadership group.

From the game itself, I heard that Harris played suprisingly bad, selling his teammates into trouble. Thats not what you want from someone coming up against a team of players that arent AFL ready! That said, its just one game so keep an eye on...

Alright, Im gunna keep the other post open for pre-game discussions for the upcoming games, but Ill keep this post updated with the totals scored for each player.

First thing I want to qualify though is that Im going to solely use DreamTeam scores here- something seemed a little off with how the SuperCoach scores were calculated and I dont think that using them will completely translate well towards using in comparison with a full game. Maybe the "end-of-game" pressure stats weighted things in a funny way?

So anyways, lets take a look at the games and see what we can see.

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Adelaide.
PlayerGamesTotalAverageAdjusted Total

Brad Symes15757114

Brent Reilly15050100

Scott Thompson15050100

Brad Moran1444488

Patrick Dangerfield27537.575

Richard Douglas1373774

Brodie Martin2723672

Michael Doughty1363672

Jared Petrenko2663366

Brodie Smith2603060

Scott Stevens1303060

Phil Davis2582958

Nathan van Berlo2562856

Shaun McKernan2562856

Ian Callinan25527.555

Rory Sloane25326.553

Andy Otten2502550

Graham Johncock1252550

Taylor Walker2502550

Jason Porplyzia1232346

Richard Tambling24120.541

Ricky Henderson23718.537

Myke Cook23517.535

James Sellar1161632

Matthew Jaensch1161632

Sam Jacobs23115.531

Luke Thompson1131326

Ben Rutten2221122

Ivan Maric1111122

Jack Gunston22110.521

Daniel Talia18816

Tony Armstrong15510

Matthew Wright2636

Kurt Tippett1224


- First thing to note here is that the game that Symes, reilly and Thompson all player in was the Port game- in which they absolutely dominated.
- Dangerfield looked bloody good and will need to be watched closely through the off-season. Could he breakout this year as he promised he would last year?
- Otten got a lot of his points in the first game and looked good enough to make a lot of peoples teams. Particularly at his price!
- Callinan started slowly, but scored a 39 in the second game. Thats the kind of...

I sure do feel like putting more exclamation marks in that title, cause boy- Im excited!

So, it all kicks of tonight in the lightning round. And honestly, I dont know what to expect.

I dont know how relevant the actual "scores" will be from these games, but it will be interesting to see how various people are deployed.

The big ones for mine are:
Tamblings role, Knights and Otten and their recovery, Callinan is a huge one, Sam Jacobs is definitely one to watch and maybe even a little Dangerfield.

Sylvia, Grimes and Green are all Melbourne premiums that are on the list. Strausss roll is one to watch. The lack of Tapscott is sad. Jack Watts has been training the house down (TM), so itll be good to see if he can bring that form with him.

Port are a little bit sad in that I dont really have much on my list. Redden is probably the big one, but Ive heard good things about Jasper Pittard.

Anyways, who and what are you guys watching out for tonight?!

Alright, weve been talking a lot about structures recent. Mainly because you can review teams until youre blue in the face, but until youve seen the NAB, combined with whats happened over the pre-season, it can all blow up in your face.

Thank goodness that the NAB starting this weekend though!

But! Thats not what Im wanting to talk about here. No, what Im wanting to do is discuss the merits of the Gun and Rookies (GnR) approach, over the mid-pricers approach.

Now, I can already here some of you thinking- "But I plan to have a mixture of the two strategies", but for the sake of this article, if youre looking at running less than 4 rookies on the field, youre mid-pricing.

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So, your typical GnR team is gunna look like this
BAC- 5 prems, 2 rookies (Yes, Otten is cheaper than Swallow- hes a rookie)
MID- 2/3 Premiums, 3/4 rookies
RUC- 1/2 Premiums, 1/0 Mid pricers (Hi Petrie!)
FWD- 5 Premiums, 1 Cheapie, 1 Rookie.

In short, you got a bunch of premiums and an absolute minimum amount of midpricers.

Meanwhile, a midprice squad comes in two flavours, either they are stacked full of your true mid-priced players- your Foleys, Cotchens, Zaharakis, Knights- or they are the hybrid team that still has a fair few rookies, but is cheaping out on the premiums, drafting a division of players know as sub-premiums (Or Jabroni Premiums, depending on what circles you travel.)

Now, historically, these methods have both been viable options, but I want to run through a couple of numbers to show just how difficult it actually is to pull of a mid-priced squad these days.

Ok, consider the following statistics-

Last year, Barlow increase his average by a massive 95

Pods increased his by 76.

3 players increased by 60+, all rookies.

17 players increased by 50+, The only non-rookies were Waters and Connors. Both however were cheaper than Swallow this year, so Im gunna count them as rookies due to their pricing.

28 players increased by 40+...

Hello again!  Its been a busy few weeks for me - with supercoach starting up again...   and moving house as well.

I want to thank Steve for all the effort he put into these writeups for the last 3 weeks. Steve, you did a great job, was excellent reading them each week - and it seems to have turned things around for your team haha. While doing the writeups, you went on a winning streak, whereas my teams form nose dived - after claiming the DD trophy outright, i then lost the next 2 games before jumping back on the winners list this week - albeit with a fairly low score. Im hoping now that I am doing this again, my team can start performing as it was a few weeks back. lol.

Our league is so close at the moment. Owen and Karlos are both on 12 and 2 at the top of the Too conference, while there are four teams on 10 and 4 at the top of the Serious conference. But where it really gets close is that there are 7 teams on 50% records holding spots 7 to 13 on our overall ladder. It doesnt stop there either: the next two spots are held by teams 1 game back - Cameron who is ranked 9th on the points for ladder; and UnderAchievers who is ranked 12th on the same table. Actually those two teams are the only two that buck the trend of our points for ladder being the same as the actual standings. To explain differently - The top 12 teams are all ranked the same on the points for ladder, with Cameron and UnderAchievers in amongst them at their spots.  alright - thats still not explained really well, but Im sure most of you will know what im yakking about.

Very close at the moment anyway! So many teams still in with a chance to make playoffs! And teams at the top can still finish in any order. And, importantly, with only 5 games to go in our regular season, all teams can still mathematically miss or make the playoffs!! Thats awesome. Some huge games coming up over the next few weeks!

I have to congratulate Kings of Karlos for winning his 9th game in a row this...

Continuing on with the community generated content, weve got a piece that was submitted by Ruddy.

Now, technically it was submitted last week and Ive been sitting on it waiting for the right time to post it- but with the Rumours going round regarding Petrie at the moment, I think were fast going past its time!

So he we go- its a fantasticly comprehensive piece about rucks.

Rucks seem to be a bit of a problem this year. Do you load up on set and forget rucks, or do you try to find some value in the mid pricers. There are a couple
of different ways you can approach the ruck conundrum this year, and each one depends on a few factors.


Most people this year were set on Sandi before SuperCoach began for the year. Sandi is the top of the top in ruckmen. But he also limits who your second ruck can be.
Whether you are going in with Sandi, or you arent i will discuss who would make a good candidate for your first and second ruck.

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2 Premiums
Sandilands: Everybody knows the benefits of Big Sandilands. He averaged 22 more ppg then the next best ruckman, and he was the only ruckman to average over 100. Can he stay injury free? Specifically towards the end of the season, during Sc finals. A must have imo.

Mumford: Sydney has a bye in round 5, and one in round 19. these are nicely spaced byes, and the round 19 bye should see Mumford go into SuperCoach finals refreshed, and ready to fire. There are questions over who will be Sydneys first ruck, and it could impact on Mumfords scoring. Mumfords scoring increased while Seaby was out with injury. Can seaby stay healthy? These are all questions whose answers you need to think about before picking Mumford.

Bradley:
I wouldnt recommend having two players from the same team, and since most people will have Sandilands, that rules out Bradley. He really has only had one year of scoring like a premium ruckman, so consistency may be an issue.

Cox: West Coast...

OK! Its time to get the official TS Supercoach leagues up and running. Well, the official leagues, and the unofficial ones.

Now, as with most things in this place, Im aiming to get them community driven. So what were gunna do is run 3 styles of leagues (well- technically 4, but shhhh... ).

General TS leagues
These are the leagues which run under the TS banner and open to anyone and everyone who wants to join. Its based on the idea that everyone who uses this place has a damn good chance at taking out the prize (see the Pine warmers from last year!).

How it will work is as follows, Weve got a thread set up <a href="http://tooserious.net/?page_id=2318&mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=70.0">Here[/url]. Visit here and find the latest league. If there is not a league open, feel free to create one- but make sure the existing leagues are full first. Just make sure its got TS in the title, its a private league so you dont get a bunch of randoms and that the name isnt, well, offensive! Once youve created a league, post the name, and code of the league in this thread and watch the people roll in! Just make sure you update the post once its full!

Donor Leagues
These work pretty much the same as the general leagues, but they are only open to the donors! You can find the league thread (and code) over <a href="http://tooserious.net/?page_id=2318&mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=71.0">Here[/url].

TS Platinum league
So good that not even I qualify.

This is a league for the best of the best. Unlike the other leagues we run in this place, it will be based on ranking - either last year or the year before (or even better- BOTH!)

Now, I plan to be fairly choosy with this league, so I dont plan on filling it fast (unless of course we have an influx of high ranked entrants of course... in which case it could be the Platinum leagues... and they can duke it out. )

If you think youve got what it takes, take a look at the thread over <a...

2011 stats, open for business.

Alright everyone, 2011 is open for business!

Now, the first thing I want to direct you all to is the Salary Calculator. You can get there either through a players profile page, or by clicking on the little calculator on the stats page.

Now, youll see a few things that werent their last year- and some others that make life easier.

Firstly, you dont need to hit recalculate- it works that out itself.
Secondly, if a player didnt play, leave the field blank instead of mucking around with the clumsy way it worked last year.
Thirdly, clicking on the linked headings will fill the calc with that column- so click on the A/A and youll see the movement based on that.
Finally, and most importantly- Theres a graph on there now! One that allows you to transpose the last 2 years of salary movement onto it!

I gotta say, its pretty fricking awesome.

Also, with the inclusion of the 2011 stats, it also means that the iThink comp is now fully open, along with the 2011 players.

Just to remind you all about that, you predict scores, you win an xBox, or a Playstation, or a wii. Its quite an awesome package and its all thanks to <a href="http://www.bladerunnerpropertyservices.com/">Bladerunner Property Services.[/url]




<img src="http://tooserious.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/consoles.png" width="470px">



Check out the competitions page to see the full details, cause its a pretty awesome comp.

Anyways, give things a looksee- let me know if anything has gone ary.

One of the regulars in these parts, LiQuiD_SiXx, sent through this article that he wrote today. I reckon its a fairly solid piece on where to start, and a couple of things to consider when deciding on the structure of your squad. More than that though, Im looking forward to hearing some of the points, and counter points that can be raised in the comments as its a fairly meaty topic when you start to peel back the layers of it. That said, I really like the idea of the community writing articles! Theres a lot of different angles to cover this year, and you guys are pretty damn cluey at this stuff, so if anyone is interested in getting there stuff published, drop me a line and we can talk about it.

So without further ado-

As we are still in the early days of Supercoach 2011, we should be dedicating most of our discussion on team structure and getting that right early rather than specific player discussions. Naturally, opinions and views of players will grow and change as we gain access to more information throughout the pre-season, so having the right team structure will enable us to maximise our player selections by Round 1 Lock-Out.
Selecting the right team structure can be one the most complex aspects of Supercoach, but if you get your right it could lead to a very successful year. Hopefully this will give some insight into how to build a competitive team structure from scratch.

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As with selecting any initial team you must start with the end in mind and first decide on your Goal for Season 2011.

Overall – The goal is to score as many points per week to attempt to win the overall score prize.
League Wins – The goal is to score enough points each week to beat your opponent and ultimately win your league Grand Final.

The difference in team structure between each goal may not vary too much, but if your goal is to win your league planning around the byes is very important. So to keep it as simple as possible it will be based...

NBA Matchup 14

I was thinking this morning that I should keep doing these write ups as I have been on a winning streak during this time.  But alas all good things must come to an end and this will be my final write up before I hand the reigns back to Anthak.  Plus I won’t be around from next Sunday as we are going on holidays for the week.

Yet another team in the NBA has sacked their coach.  The Pacers parted ways with Jim O’Brien.  I was keen on the Pacer’s playoff chances prior to the season starting but they have been a mess for the last 5-6 weeks and a change needed to be made.   There have been some big games in the NBA this week, none bigger than the rematch between the Lakers and the Celtics with the C’s overturning the result from the finals last year.  I am not sure what to make of the Lakers at the moment? They are just going through the motions as they realise they can lift a few gears once the playoffs start.  But getting beaten by the Kings in LA? What is going on there?  Teams will be trying to get as many wins as possible before the All Star Break in a few weeks time

This week only one trade was processed in our league whereby Heaver traded Kevin Martin to Fudge and received Wilson Chandler in return.   Both teams have done well with that trade.  This week  has seen some very exciting matches in our league and there were a few upsets thrown in as well.

Please read over the break for the reviews and the previews for Matchup 15.

<!--more-->Stevo’s Nuggets      1244     v     Team Anthak     1239

I still can’t believe I won this match.  This match had everything and went down right to the final buzzer in the Warriors/Jazz game.   I was holding onto a slender lead in the 4th qtr and Reggie Williams was coming home strong which nearly got Anthak over the line.  My score of 1244 was a PB for me this season and I had some great contributions from Wall 177, Hickson 148, Young 147,...