Some of you may have read this article, as it was put up on the Hun website last Friday. Here it is again, but on TS, in its unedited form - ie. without the SC Gold reference



Cash Cows



Due to being raised on a dairy farm, Gary Rohan could be considered the ultimate cash cow in the AFL, because it is otherwise fairly difficult to associate AFL players with cattle. The exception is when you are a SuperCoach playing to win, in which case cash cows” are a regular part of one's vocabulary.



Cash Cows are players who you have in your team primarily to generate money, which you can then use to strengthen your team. Rookie-priced players generally rise in value quickly and by the largest margin. Most SuperCoaches will start with somewhere between nine and 16 rookie-priced players and the idea is to trade them in at the point where they have peaked in price. Using cash cows to their maximum potential can result in having a fully upgraded team by about Round 14, ready to pile on the points in the run home to the end of the season.



The initial salary of first year players is determined by where they were taken in their draft; whereas experienced players' salaries are mostly dependant on their average points from the season prior. Based on the latter, we can attribute hypothetical price-based averages to the first-year players and to those who have a discounted starting price, which helps us predict how a player's price may evolve during the season. For example, pick #1 in the 2012 GWS Mini-draft, Jack Martin, has a starting salary of $222,300, which is the equivalent of a player who averaged approximately 42 points last season; whereas Matt Crouch, who was selected at pick 23 of the National Draft, has a starting salary of $117,300, the approximate equivalent to an average of 22 points.



Based on a player's salary and their previous few scores, we can also determine the 'breakeven' score they must reach in their next match to maintain their value. Players with low prices generally score much greater than their price-based average, which results in their price rising very quickly over their first five or six games, before it levels out as their increasing price-based average nears their actual average.



Important to consider is that the total salary of all players equals the same figure each and every week. Therefore, because many more players score a great deal higher than their price-based average than those who score a lot less, players who hit their price-based average exactly need to come down in price as well. What this all means is that players need to score better than their price-based average to maintain their value, and the lower their price, the easier it is for them to increase it.



We can use the two players mentioned above to examine how easily they can rise in price. Price rises are determined by the player's previous three scores so we can make rough predictions by considering a player scores the same each week. Keep in mind that this analysis is just a guide [span style='background-color: white;]because a couple of huge games or a couple of stinkers could each have drastic effects on a player's price at the time.



Both Crouch and Martin have a bye in Round 8, and let's say they scored 75 (just below the SuperCoach average score) in each and every week before then; Crouch would increase to around $320k, and Martin would increase to around $342k. That's not a lot of difference in their end value but the extra $100k you spent on Martin initially could have bought you Pendlebury instead of Liberatore. In this scenario, Martin would earn you around $120k and Crouch would earn you $200k. For Martin to earn $200k before the bye, he would need to score almost 100 points each week.



If your cash cows earn you around $200k each, the combined total value of two of them would be greater than $600k. If you feel that they've peaked - they are priced at their average, thus wont gain much more value from here - you can now use one of them to trade in a new cheapie, leaving you around $500k to trade the other up into a premium player who has had a couple of poor games and momentarily dropped in price.



Looking at the data from 2013, 31 players peaked greater than $200k higher than they started. Jaeger O'Meara was the best of all, peaking at $461,700 in Round 15, after starting the year priced at $115,900 - an increase of $345,800.



There were 16 players who peaked at least $250k higher than their starting price, and only one of them began with a price greater than $130k - Nick Vlastuin who started at $159,500 - whereas it was different in the group of players who rose between $200k and $250k at their peak, with nine of those 15 starting at greater than $130k, demonstrating the difficulty for the higher priced rookies to rise as good as the best, but also that they can rise enough to be worthwhile.



Where it gets really interesting is when considering how many games it took players to reach $200k higher than they started. Considering all 31 players who achieved this milestone, the players who started with prices less than $130k took an average of 7.7 games to rise $200k, Mark Blicavs taking the longest with 11 games. Tom Mitchell, Brett Goodes and Tom Nicholls took the shortest, needing just 5 games each. Whereas players who started on more than $130k had to wait an average of 11.2 games to rise $200k, the same as what it took Blicavs! Of players in this bracket, Luke Brown was a really slow burner, taking 19 games to achieve the feat, and Vlastuin was the quickest needing just 5 games.



All the evidence suggests selecting cheaper players as your cash cows is preferable; however, whether they are priced at $100k or $200k, they're not going to earn you any money if they're not getting games. Therefore, when picking your team, on top of a consideration to the relationship between price and scoring potential, it is also important to aim for cash cows who are likely to play regular senior footy. After the season is under way, ensure to keep an eye on TooSerious.net and the breakevens to help you determine the optimal time to cash in your cash cows. Finally, priced at $176,200 and having fully recovered from his sickening leg injury, Gary Rohan has dairy farm experience and actually is one of the better options of potential cash cows this season.