Cheers mate, I actually do agree with you on some of that. Ended up taking out SMurph since it doesn't look like he'll get a pre-season game and bringing in Fyfe, out Hanners in Florent or similar and upgraded McCarthy to Buddy. Marchbank I'll hold on to as he was pretty impressive as a junior but I'm sure all my rookies and probably like half of my other players will still change by round 1.

He will.

Thanks. Poor lad (please don't tell him R1 will quickly fill that hole he was keeping warm).

@pollypies - I am a highly risk averse coach so would avoid so many players who didn't play much in 2016. That and fitting in so many "premos" means you will have to nail your rookies or burn early trades in order to generate enough fast cash.

No doubt JLT stats and Round 1 selections will mean shuffling rookies around a little.

I normally don't look at starting to get serious about my team until I see the JLT stats at look at SC averages and TOG numbers in order to sort out my rookies then look at which premos I can squeeze in

For a bit of fun I have started off with the most expensive premos (with the exception of JJK downgraded slightly to Buddy for salary cap reasons) and a reasonably balanced structure of 3 premium defenders and 3 premium forwards, with rookie selections based on rookies who are named for JLT week 4 having played 2 games and averaging at least 55 with a variety of rookie price points filled.
(ie all named on post 12 at http://tooserious.net/forum/threads/2017-jlt-pre-season-round-4-9-matches.89789/)

That team ends up as

DOCHERTY, SIMPSON, SHAW, Hampton, Otten, EVW (T Stewart, Melican)
DANGER, PENDLES, ABLETT, JPK, HANNERS, Jaegarbomb, Brodie, Fox (SPP, Barratt, Parfitt FM)
GAWN, Sandy (Preuss)
NROO, DAHLHAUS FM, FRANKLIN, Taranto FM, Schoenmakers, Houston (Butler, Black)
12-3-15 with $6,900 in the bank

Bringing in some value premiums and/or rebalancing the side by dropping a premo mid and replacing with a premo elsewhere should allow me to upgrade one of O'Meara, Sandy or Taranto to a premium making my team 13-2-15. From reading rate my team threads here and on other sites I expect a lot of teams will have 13-3-14, 13-4-13 or 14-2-14.

I am comfortable in bringing in rookies who have played 1 or 2 JLT matches instead of all 3, the main thing is getting players who get picked Round 1 in the team. For now I am avoiding a dpp floating donut or M11 floating donut but may well go with it for the first time.

Feedback on team structure and which of the premos to avoid would be great !

Here's my best GnR team at the moment:



O'Meara or Nankervis. That is the key decision for me. Could easily switcheroo back to Jaeger, but I also really like the R/F DPP link.

13-3-14 is a my preferred structure, just like yours. I think it is looking like the way to go this year.

I am happy with Beams-Nankervis-Roughead whereas you have O'Meara-Sandy-Taranto with your extra cash going towards slightly higher-priced mid-premiums. Risks in both cases, but I believe the R/F DPP link is important to have.

Plan B:

Going for an extra 2 mid-pricers (by taking out Franklin and Turner and replacing them with O'Meara and Petracca) has me with this team:



I also have to downgrade Cameron to Strnadica to find a few extra $$$ and just scrape in.

Is this better than the GnR version?

Normally at this point everyone says disregard rookies, but tbh there are so few that GNR may not be the go to strategy this year.
At least 8 of those chosen may not play R1. For me that's the big issue this year.

That said, I am not keen on Ablett but the rest all look like genuinely solid choices.

Be aware with Taranto he is no lock to play past the first few rounds, and even if he played every game to round 8 averaging 85 his value is around 370k, at that point Whitfield and Deledio are back and I don't think he keeps either out, Matt Kennedy has had at least as good a pre-season and will be pushing for the same spots.
If you pick him you are banking on keeping him and him playing 15 to 20 games, becoming your bench guy. I am not confident he plays that many games but lack of viable options means I may end up naming him myself out of necessity.

I generally like this team.

However, it is FWD heavy which means no DANGER. Do you think Dangerfield will slow down compared to his 2016 average? My biggest concern is your captain choice each week. If you are comfortable choosing between Gawn and Fyfe, all power to you. Better hope that Dangerfield doesn't go off early because the rest of the field will start to leave you behind if he does.

It's riskier, but FWIW I like it better.