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 going to get the job done, you should be looking for premiums that are going to improve on their scores from last year. Think Ablett/Swan/Montagna/Davis from last year, improving 15-30 points from an already premium price. Which premiums do you believe will improve this year? Write them down.

Remember though, these players are going to be in your team for the entire year. So while you might think Chapman a great pickup, the informed SuperCoach knows that its doubtful that he will play 22 games and is therefore overpriced.

A rookie, funnily enough, isnt always a first year player. Its just someone priced like a first year player. In fact, second or even third year "rookies" can often be gold when picking them up due to their bigger bodies and the pre-seasons under their belt. Rookies are generally the greatest way to increase the value of your team because they enter the system with a very low average.

Once again, what you want to do here is find as many rookie players as you can that will increase their average a significant amount- write them down.

Now, there are a couple of things to consider here. Firstly, because of the way SuperCoach salaries work, a rookie will need to play 3 games to get their first boost in salary, and will then increase (or decrease) for every game after that. What you want to be able to do is follow your rookie, and when they have hit a price peak (about to decrease), trade them down to free up cash and then use that cash to turn another one of your players into a Premium. Do this enough times, and youll have a great squad.

And this is where <a href="http://tooserious.net">TooSerious[/url] comes into its own, allowing you to track how much a players salary will be going up, or down, based on their current form. Its an invaluable tool in working out not only which players have peaked in price, but also which Premiums are bottoming out.

Because of this, its important to remember, you dont need your rookies to play the entire year. You need them to play until they max out. Some players it might take 6 weeks, others 12 weeks. But with only 2 trades a week, thats fine.

And finally, the Improvers. These guys are generally the hardest kind of player to pick up. And unless youve got a team littered with Rookies, youre going to need a selection of these players. My definition of an improver changes from position to position. While Gilbee in the backline, priced at $450k would be a Premium, Luke Ball in the mids, I would only rate as an Improver in the mids. Even though he costs the same. This is because the price of midfielders is more expensive, so naturally, you should expect more from them.

However, another reason I like Improvers is because if you pick them right, they become Premiums. Last year saw St Kildas Sam Gilbert and Leigh Montagna, or Fremantles Paul Duffield do exactly that. In fact, year after year, after all is said and done, a team of mostly Improvers can be put together that would win SuperCoach without using a single trade. The problem being, picking these players can be a little hit and miss. There are a few tell-tale signs that we like to look for to suggest which Improvers will be the real deal.

Firstly, a change in position. This is pay dirt in SuperCoach circles. Listening to reviews of small forwards moving into the midfield, or someone being slated as the "quarterback" for any given team is music to my ears.
Next, trawling the discounts. A discount will usually create fantastic value within the players who get them. Not only because they normally have an "injury" game from the previous year lowering their average, but youll also get the discount on top of this. Waite is a perfect example of this, a 107 average before an injury score of 7 decimated his year. With a 20% discount on top of that has brought his cost to that of an 80 average. However, you must be careful with the discounts as they normally mean a player has missed a significant portion of the last year, and could be subject to poor form as they play out the rust.
Finally, general improvement. Young players take some time to find their feet, build their tanks and just plain get better. This is generally found with players in their first 5 years, with the odd exceptions of course. Gibbs, Selwood and Pendlebury have been perfect examples of this over the last few years, constantly tracking upwards.

So, now you should have yourself a short list. A list of every player that *you* personally believe will be good value this year. Where to go from here? Well, the first thing to do would be to pick out your locks. Those players that you believe will do exceptionally this year. For some these locks might be Captain Ablett, up and still coming Bryce Gibbs, the redeeming Barry Hall, returning from injury Josh Hunt, the dynamic Melbourne duo of Scully and Trengove, or perhaps Dustin Martin. Grrrrr.

Now you should have a solid skeleton of a team knocked up, and its time to fill up the gaps with the rest of your list.

First thing to remember - you *only* have 20 trades and you will score injuries, which means that a good portion of your starting team WILL be there at the end. So what you want to ensure is that youve got enough trades to upgrade your entire team, leaving a handful free for injuries (or the 3rd round shuffle if you feel the need.)

Personally, I count any on-field rookie as 2 trades (Since you need to trade down a rookie to free up the cash required to turn your on-field rookie into a premium), while Ill count my improvers as roughly 1.4 trades (ie- 3 trades for 2, 4 trades for 3 or 5 trades for 4.) This is because, when done right, an improver should have improved to roughly the same cost as a fallen premium throughout the year and would now be at a perfect time to strike, but theres an extra trade thrown in to grease the wheels just in case you fall a little short cash-wise on a great trade.

Using that model, my current team only has 13 keepers, but should only require 13 trades to become premium leaving plenty of room for injury trades.

However you structure your team however, you need to ensure that you do it in such a way that its feasible for you to finish with a full team. Even if injury decimates you throughout the year, youve given yourself the best chance.

Next point to remember - and this is a re-interaction on point one - you WILL get injuries. Sometimes they will be short term, other times youll be forced to trade. And this is where choosing durable premiums is important. As I mentioned earlier with Chapman, if youre only getting 19 or less games out of your premiums, youre getting ripped off! Thats a full 10*% worth of value there for 3 games missed (*figure depends on what bench coverage youve got), so you want to ensure that youre paying your big bucks on people that are going to play all year.

Remember what I said originally though. Winning Supercoach is about scoring points. So sometimes its worth using your trades on premiums, even if its only a two week injury, if it means avoiding a couple of Zeros.

However, your improvers or rookies also need a certain degree of durability since they wont be appreciating in value for your while they are sitting on the sidelines. This is negated slightly by the fact that these types of players only need to play roughly 6-12 games before they reach an acceptable level to trade them out. Play around with the calculators over on the stats page to see what effects a players score has on their salaries and see just how long it can take cashcows to be ready.

Another thing to look at when selecting Premiums is to look at a players Standard Differential (SD). Players with a high SD will have a tendency to fall in value because of the way salaries work. So it is generally better to *not* start with these premiums as they undoubtedly be cheap to pick up through the year. These players tend to be your successful Key Forwards, or your mids that havent quite learnt to cop a tight tag yet. Conversely though, these high SD players are *exactly* what you are looking for in an Improver as a pair of great games over a three week period will send their salary flying.

You might take into account the season ticker tab, looking to pick up improvers from team that have an easy draw early on- or perhaps avoiding players from teams that have a hard run from rounds 5-7 (assuming they will come down in value, right in time for you to pick them up.)

There are also the new MPP rules to consider. Have you got players that can switch positions in your short list? Then perhaps there could be some value in coupling a few of them up, particularly if one side of the couple is a rookie.

And there you have it. Take all that into consideration and find yourself that game winning mix of players that you believe has what it takes to win. Remember, well be here all season to assist with trading ideas and strategies. Weve got a fantastic community building here that is more than happy to offer advice to any SuperCoach out there who asks.

But remember this advice now and take it with you moving forward. Patience is the key to trading. But that is for another post.

Now, as a little reward to any of you who have read down this far Im going to be posting my own extended short-list in the comments. Generally, I reckon you cant go too wrong if you select the majority of your team from this list. Of course, it will be full of my own personal bias, so there will definitely be other players out there that are a chance to break out but I reckon the winning team will come from the majority of players on my list.

Now, because Im well aware of my inability to write and convey perfect English (Im a programmer for goodness sakes!), Im sure there will be parts that dont make sense, or things I havent explained properly. Dont be afraid to ask. Or add your own personal ideas to the subject. I would love to enhance this article and make it useful, year after year.