Taking into account the feedback above, my option would be: "A coach can name a pure forward or defender (no M/F or D/M) in the ruck position, and receive their full SC score, providing that coaches squad contains at least 2 players with 'ruck' in the position title, and none are selected by their AFL team." Its a conservative option, and its not going to solve the ruck scoring gap issue I highlighted above. It's really just going to solve the OOP ruck issue for bottom 10 teams.
Interesting idea. It could effectively have F1 or D1 being rucks. Scoring-wise, the team would get a boost of about 25-35 on average (which is about how much an OOP ruck scores, sometimes more). But in terms of the Giant Tap, teams with 2 token rucks can potentially field a top defender. And while there's 15 rucks with an ORFFU Av of 85+, there are 28 pure DEFs and 10 pure FWDs.
That said, the tactical requirements of such a strategy requires a team to effectively run a squad of 26 to get a boost of about 30.
Left field option, how about we drop the naming of emergencies and utilise the 4 interchange spots as scoring players. This could drive up the value for lesser known players and enhance the value of later draft picks as coaches will need two more scoring players
I like the concept of more scoring players. But not sure getting rid of emergencies is great. We do name our squad early.
That would just make the gap wider. A lot of struggling teams are doing so because they can't always get 15 out, let alone 19.
It's only 17 players not 19. Depth is an issue for struggling teams , but instead of continuing to draft young hopefuls there are plenty of scoring players in pool available 108 by my count. Teams are named early enough that we should be able to manage them.
I agree totally with this above from Ron. I've been in a similar boat for longer obviously. I'm all for left field ideas but surprised this has one has gained any traction. How would changing the rules around this one position help equalise the competition? The current difference between the 1st and 18th ranked ruck is about 50 points. This just doesn't make any sense to me. From a pure numbers perspective how would this really help the lower ranked teams? + obviously from a fairness and long term list building viewpoint (which is what I thought this caper was all about!?) this would be a ridiculous change. Factor that in with positional changes over time and DPP changes now happening 3 times per year as @JPK touched on. I can't see this as a viable solution. Making a rule that you can only have x amount of mids averaging over 110 or x forwards over 80 would make more sense but I'd be against that too. Way too many intangibles would affect all of these ideas eg. injuries, random positional changes to cover these, coaching decisions, tactics week to week, etc. I'm not sure what the solution is here but I'm all for less control and more freedom in how we build our teams.
%, there have been some good ideas but I'm all for letting coaches do as they please less control more freedom
Just remember coaches, any ideas/changes will be limited to what the platform will allow. And something may have to be for all ts leagues. I would recommend checking with the Big Boss that we can do some of these changes first before voting as we may want something that the system isn't set up to do.
Well we might want to pull that finger out, if we want something implemented for the start of next season it may impact this trade period, even if it's as simple as let coaches do as they please