TooSerious

Its at that pointy end of the pre-season. After all the NAB games have been played. Youve been tweaking your team for what feels like an eternity and its finally rolling around to lockout.

Youve pawed through training reports, analysed stats, read a million opinion pieces on why such-and-such will have a good year, but have you picked a good team?.

Whether you are a new player or a seasoned professional, the dynamics of a team is often the side of SuperCoach that is most often overlooked.

So, what makes a winning team?

Some will say picking the right rookies is the key, others will tell you that value players are where its at. Some believe that captain selection is the be all, while others might say your bench. Some believe that your trading strategies are what will bring home the bacon while others believe that its all a case of lady luck, blessing your players with a purple patch and others with an ACL.

Its a very simple question, but for everything that people say is required to win SuperCoach, it has a very simple answer- A winning team scores the most points.

Its a simple truth that often gets overlooked, but can have a profound effect on selecting your team.

Yes, all those points mentioned above are all important parts of making a winning score, however, if youre seriously planning to have a real stab at winning, youve got to consider how all of those parts will come together to score your team the most points.

And more importantly, you need to get yourself a strategy, from day 1, that you will try to implement through the year.

So, where do you begin?

(This is a very long post; see the rest over the break)
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Personally, I tend to separate players into three categories. Premiums, Improvers and Rookies.

A Premium is a player that is already at the top of their game. Think Ablett, Bartel and Chapman from Geelong, or Swan, Pendlebury and Didak from Collingwood. Dont forget though, even though 90% of premiums are...

<h1>[span style="color: #000000">ESSENDON</h1>
2008 POSITION: 12
2009 POSITION: 8 - eliminated in Elimination Final by Adelaide
2010 EXPECTED POSITION: 8-12
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="436"><col span="1" width="89"></col><col span="1" width="96"></col><col span="1" width="82"></col><col span="1" width="92"></col><col span="1" width="77"></col>
<tbody>

<td width="89" height="20"> 
<td width="96">DEF
<td width="82">MID
<td width="92">RUC
<td width="77">FWD



<td height="20">PREMIUM
<td width="96"> 
<td width="82">Watson
 
 



<td height="40">POT. PREM.
<td width="96"> 
<td width="82">Winderlich
Stanton
Ryder
<td width="77"> 



<td height="40">VALUE
<td width="96"> 
<td width="82">Prismall
McVeigh
Hille
<td width="77">M Williams
Gumbleton



<td height="220">AT THE MARK
<td width="96">Fletcher
Lovett-Murray
Dempsey
Hurley
Pears
Houli
Atkinson
Hooker
Quinn
Daniher
Myers
<td width="82">Welsh
Hocking
Dyson
Lonergan
Houli
H Slattery
Zaharakis
<td width="92">Laycock
<td width="77">Monfries
Hurley
Davey
Reimers
Neagle
Quinn
Daniher
Jetta



<td height="80">SUB 200s
<td width="96">Slattery
Carlisle
<td width="82">Melksham
Hardingham
Long
Colyer
<td width="92">Bellchambers
<td width="77">Still



<td height="60">ROOKIE LIST
<td width="96">Crameri
<td width="82">J Williams
Marigliani
Howlett
<td width="92">Bock
<td width="77">Silverlock



<td height="20">INJURED
 
 
 
 




Just to ensure that you keep yourself involved in our Competitions this year, here are some links to the most recent e-mails:
SIDEWAYS TOP ROUND: <a title="SIDEWAYS TOP ROUND" href="http://tooserious.net/?p=766" target="_blank">http://tooserious.net/?p=766[/url]
FOOTY SYSTEM BET TIPPING: <a title="FOOTY SYSTEM BET TIPPING" href="http://tooserious.net/?p=798" target="_blank">http://tooserious.net/?p=798[/url]
TEXT OUT SMS LEAGUES: <a title="TEXT OUT SMS...

<h1>[span style="color: #000000">CARLTON</h1>
2008 POSITION: 7 - eliminated in Elimination Final by Brisbane
2009 POSITION: 11
2010 EXPECTED POSITION: 6-10
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="369"><col span="1" width="89"></col><col span="1" width="75"></col><col span="2" width="65"></col><col span="1" width="75"></col>
<tbody>

<td width="89" height="20"> 
<td width="75">DEF
<td width="65">MID
<td width="65">RUC
<td width="75">FWD



<td height="60">PREMIUM
<td width="75"> 
<td width="65">Murphy
Judd
Gibbs
 
 



<td height="20">POT. PREM.
Thornton
<td width="65"> 
Kreuzer
 



<td height="40">VALUE
<td width="75">Bower
Waite
<td width="65">Walker
Warnock
<td width="75">Waite



<td height="220">AT THE MARK
<td width="75">Scotland
Carazzo
Russell
Johnson
Anderson
Henderson
OhAilpin
Armfield
Browne
Austin
Jamison
<td width="65">Simpson
Carazzo
McLean
Hadley
Grigg
Joseph
Robinson
<td width="65">Hampson
Jacobs
<td width="75">Houlihan
Betts
Wiggins
Fisher
Henderson
OhAilpin
Yarran



<td height="40">SUB 200s
<td width="75">OKeefe
Davies
<td width="65">Lucas
<td width="65"> 
<td width="75">Tiller
Kerr



<td height="80">ROOKIE LIST
<td width="75">Dare
Tuohy
White
<td width="65">Cachia
 
<td width="75">Garlett
Ellard
Donaldson
Casboult



<td height="20">INJURED
 
 
 
 




Just to ensure that you keep yourself involved in our Competitions this year, here are some links to the most recent e-mails:
SIDEWAYS TOP ROUND: <a title="SIDEWAYS TOP ROUND" href="http://tooserious.net/?p=766" target="_blank">http://tooserious.net/?p=766[/url]
FOOTY SYSTEM BET TIPPING: <a title="FOOTY SYSTEM BET TIPPING" href="http://tooserious.net/?p=798" target="_blank">http://tooserious.net/?p=798[/url]
TEXT OUT SMS LEAGUES: <a title="TEXT OUT SMS LEAGUES" href="http://tooserious.net/?p=787" target="_blank">http://tooserious.net/?p=787[/url]

<h1>[span style="color: #000000">ADELAIDE</h1>
2008 POSITION: 7 - eliminated in Elimination Final by Collingwood
2009 POSITION: 5 - eliminated in Semi Final by Collingwood
2010 EXPECTED POSITION: 5-8

 
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="384"><col span="1" width="89"></col><col span="1" width="81"></col><col span="1" width="82"></col><col span="1" width="52"></col><col span="1" width="80"></col>
<tbody>

<td width="89" height="20"> 
<td width="81">DEF
<td width="82">MID
<td width="52">RUC
<td width="80">FWD



<td height="40">PREMIUM
<td width="81">Goodwin
Bock
 
 
 



<td height="40">POT. PREM.
 
<td width="82">Vince
S Thompson
Tippett
Tippett



<td height="40">VALUE
 
Dangerfield
 
<td width="80">Dangerfield
Hentschel



<td height="160">AT THE MARK
<td width="81">Johncock
Doughty
Symes
McLeod
Rutten
S Stevens
Petrenko
McKernan
<td width="82">Edwards
Doughty
Van Berlo
Mackay
Reilly
Cook
Sloane
Martin
<td width="52">Moran
Maric
Griffin
<td width="80">Porplyzia
Knights
Douglas
S Stevens
Walker
McKernan



<td height="80">SUB 200s
<td width="81">Talia
Davis
Young
Shaw
Armstrong
<td width="52">Sellar
Craig
<td width="80">Jacky
Talia
Davis



<td height="60">ROOKIE LIST
<td width="81">Schmidt
L Thompson
<td width="82">Riley
Wright
 
<td width="80">Donnelly
Henderson
Jaensch



<td height="20">INJURED
Otten
 
 
Burton




The Team Review for each team is following a simple setup this year.

By position, players have been ranked as either:
PREMIUM - Bonafide Star
POTENTIAL PREMIUM - Could be Bonafide Star
VALUE - Good value pick
AT THE MARK - About right in terms of cost
SUB 200s - Any player on the main list costing <$200k
ROOKIE LIST - On the Rookie List at start of year
INJURED - Player who is injured for the medium-long term

Just to ensure that you keep yourself involved in our Competitions this year,...

Alright, cause the majority of games were played out off stage, Im gunna write a quick review of the one that was played, then dot the rest of this weekends talking points out in point form. And man, was there some doozies!

A BIG game this weekend, with the top story for the game being BBBBBBH and his 7 goal haul. Gotta be on the radar now!
Goddard and Riewoldt have thrown out the gauntlet to everyone who has made the decision not to play them with a 99 and 113 respectively.
Higgins scored himself 105 points with only 5 kicks (and 9 handballs). Guarentee me 20 games and hell be a lock!
The biggest downer for the night was surely Fisher, ruling himself out for the first 4 rounds.

And the bullet points.
- Sam Fisher - Out for 4 -6 weeks with an ankle.
- Dean Cox - Didnt train. Rumour mill is running wild. Naitanui and maybe even Will Sullivan, come on dooooown.
- David Hille - Has come back very strong in his pre season games. Hille/Naitanui anyone? Could you be that daring even with Tippett covering?
- Robbie Gray - Looks to have done something to his hammy. No reports have come out to confirm it though, which seems strange. Must keep an eye on this one.
- Wonnaeamirri - Came back from injury, only to be re-injured. Avoid.
- Barry Hall kicked 7 in the NAB Grand final. Surely though if it takes kicking 7 to crack the ton, youve got to have question marks? Still looks to be fantastic value though.
- Heath Scotland injured a shoulder - "should be right for round 1"
- Apparently "Best and fairest winner Bernie Vince, veterans Andrew McLeod and Tyson Edwards, midfielders Scott Thompson and Nathan van Berlo, ruckmen Ivan Maric and James Sellar and forwards Brett Burton and Chris Knights all missed the clash with the Blues but are a chance to play against Fremantle." - So anyone with an eye on Adelaides fringe, watch out.
- Max Rooke, tendinitis. Should secure Hunt even more so in the line up.
- Sylvia, 8 weeks with a broken jaw - Scully and Trengove...

I couldnt resist ensuring Sheedy would get behind us.
I know I could have done better with the quote, something like "I wish I used tooserious" but hey its early on a Monday morning.

<a href="http://tooserious.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/supercoach_sheeds-on-board.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-795" src="http://tooserious.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/supercoach_sheeds-on-board-291x300.jpg" alt="" width="291" height="300" />[/url]

Hope your secret selections did well on the weekend!

Alright boys and girls,

The <a href="http://textoutsms.com.au/">TextOutSMS TooSerious Leagues[/url] are FULL!

However, its turns out that there is still a bit of interest in creating an extra league. So heres the plan.

Because its getting real close to the cutoff point, I dont want to start the league until I know we have 15 people willing to participate.

So, if you want in, then comment in here and Ill chalk you up as interested. Well work it out from there.

While Im talking leagues, let me remind you that the <a href="http://www.sideways.com.au/">Sideways Cup[/url] is open to everybody.

All you need to do is plug your Supercoach ID into the Supercoach Ref field on the Accounts screen to be in the running.

Now, Ive noticed that a couple of people seem to have entered invalid details (either the whole URL, or a number that looks much too high) - So a reminder on what to do (cause I dont want anyone missing out!)

- Log OUT of your supercoach team, and go here: <a href="http://supercoach.heraldsun.com.au/?p=topcoaches">http://supercoach.heraldsun.com.au/?p=topcoaches[/url]
- Search for your team.
- Copy the link to your team into a program like Notepad or something.
- grab the tid (The bolded bit in: http://supercoach.heraldsun.com.au/?p=other_teams&tid=24&lid=1 )
- enter that number into the SuperCoach Ref on the Accounts tab.
And youre done!

EDIT - Latest teams are over the break (click more)

Alrighty, its the last weekend of footy before lockout. Meaning this is our last chance to see anything before getting our team locked in for the year.

Also, its this week that is usually a good indicator on what a team thinks their best 18 will look like.

So the final challenge matches are out, lets see what weve got.

BRISBANE LIONS V HAWTHORN


<blockquote>Brisbane Lions
1. Mitch Clark, 2. Albert Proud, 4. Travis Johnstone, 5. Brendan Fevola, 6. Luke Power, 7. Jed Adcock, 8. Matt Austin, 9. Ashley Mcgrath, 10. Daniel Rich, 11. Justin Sherman, 12. James Hawksley, 14. Brent Staker, 16. Jonathan Brown, 17. Jared Brennan, 18. Todd Banfield, 20. Simon Black, 21. Daniel Merrett, 22. Tom Collier, 23. Matthew Leuenberger, 24. Joel Patfull, 29. Andrew Raines, 30. Jack Redden, 31. James Polkinghorne, 32. Cheynee Stiller, 33. Amon Buchanan, 35. Michael Rischitelli, 36. Matt Maguire, 38. Tom Rockliff, 39. Josh Drummond.
</blockquote>


There are some definite rookie priced options on the table up in Queensland. Itll be great to get a look at their gametime this weekend.



<blockquote>Hawthorn
2. Jarryd Roughead, 3. Jordan Lewis, 4. Rick Ladson, 5. Sam Mitchell, 6. Josh Gibson, 7. Michael Osborne, 8. Xavier Ellis, 10. Chance Bateman, 15. Luke Hodge 18. Brent Guerra, 19. Jarryd Morton, 20. Rhan Hooper, 23. Lance Franklin, 25. Ryan Schoenmakers, 26. Liam Shiels, 27. Stephen Gilham, 28. Garry Moss, 29. Tom Murphy, 30. Campbell Brown, 31. Matthew Suckling, 34. Brent Renouf, 39. Ben Stratton, 41. Taylor Duryea, 42. Wayde Skipper, 45. Jarrod Kayler-Thomson, 48. Carl Peterson.</blockquote>

Lewis and Ladson not being injured makes for some great news for Hawk fans.

JKT should be on our radars as well!

CARLTON v ADELAIDE
<blockquote>Carlton
1. Andrew Walker, 2. Jordan Russell, 3. Marc Murphy, 4. Bryce Gibbs, 5. Chris Judd, 6. Kade...

Time and time the question comes up- What the heck are we suppposed to do about rucks this year?

Never before have we been this spoiled for choice in the rucks. It was lock in Cox and the flavor ruck of choice, and its gangbusters from there.

This year, weve a great supply of premium rucks to chose from, all with their unique downsides, and nice handful of bargain rucks- who as with all players returning from injury, look to carry their own risks.

Tonight we have myself, lucas and last years SuperCoach Chris weighing in on the discussion over the break.

(And read the post under this one for a league update as well as a brand new FREE competition!)

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So, its a tough topic tonight, so I think Ill weigh in first.

<blockquote>
When Lucas first raised this as a topic to discuss, my initial plan was to mock up a gag dartboard, complete with each of the "choose-able" rucks displayed, and Port Adelaides Daniel Bass on the outside- Its just that hard a topic.

Sadly my mad skillz in paint arent quite as mad as I had hoped and that gag will never see the light of day.

The good news is that youll get a serious response from me.

Now, I figured the two ways to take this discussion is to discuss the three viable rucking strategies available.

Firstly, let me say- those of you with the plan to run with two bargain rucks and a prayer- I wish you guys luck, I dont think I would ever have a cajones to do such a thing. Plus I definitely see better value in mid-priced players in every other position. Though if you do do it, either plan to start with Tippett, or look to upgrade to Petrie in that forward line!
- The players from this category I would count as Ottens, Hille, Naitanui, White, Seaby, Mumford, Leuenberger, Warnock and now Skipper

Next, we come to the Set and Forget. Here we have two premiums *hopefully* batting out the entire year for you. I say hopefully because we all saw what happened last year in the rucks! This strategy,...

So, the league codes have been sent. Were now officially closed off to making any new leagues.

We have three TooSerious50 leagues and one TooSerious20 League.

Currently, we have 7 openings left in the TooSerious50 league, and 6 unpaid positions.

In the TooSerious20 league, we currently have 1 unpaid position.

So get those payments in guys! I would hate to have to bump you for someone else!!

Now, we have some big news. The TooSerious leagues now have a sponsored grand final prize.
<a href="http://textoutsms.com.au/"><img src="http://textoutsms.com.au/images/computer_tower_mobile1.gif"><img src="http://textoutsms.com.au/images/textoutsms_logo.gif">[/url]

So I will now be refering to them as the TextOutSMS TooSerious Leagues.

The good people over at <a href="http://textoutsms.com.au/">TextOutSMS[/url] have been kind enough to offer 1000 free SMSs to the grand final winners of the TooSerious50 leagues, and 400 free SMSs to the grand final winners of the TooSerious20 league.

So get over there and have a look, they offer some fantastic deals with SMS.

So thank you!


Now, to all of you who have read down this far, I would like to announce a new competition.

A free, sponsored competition by the good folks down at <a href="http://www.sideways.com.au">Sideways - Radio Controlled, Dirt Racing, Road Racing, Drift Cars, Crawl Cars, Slot Cars | Racing[/url]

<a href="http://www.sideways.com.au"><img src="http://tooserious.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sideways.jpg">[/url]

So, the fine folk down at sideways have offered a corporate package for ten people, worth $500 to the winner of the Sideways Cup.

So, what is the Sideways cup, and how do you enter?

The beauty of the Sideways cup is that it will operate outside of the SuperCoach leagues.

To enter, simply log into your TooSerious account, click on the account tab and enter your Supercoach number into the SuperCoach ref field (Then save).

What is your supercoach number I...