Draft till the death and draft for your bench
There is nothing quite as exciting as building up your draft lists in preparation for your annual draft.
A lot of leagues make their draft an annual event often turning into a reunion of old mates and preseason party. It is easy to get swept up in the excitement and not execute your draft to the best of your ability. In many cases well laid plans for your draft list are thrown out the window as you see an unexpected run on a certain position or you throw a Hail Mary up for a rookie that you are sure will be the “next Cook”.
There are a few things to keep in mind to assist in any draft and these strategies often come into play in later rounds where there is less quality remaining and you need to pick your players strategically. This is even more important in large leagues such as Supporter Leagues (16 teams) where the quality players are all taken within the first 10 rounds.
Draft till the death
Often towards the end of a draft coaches start to draft based on media rumours and take major gambles that rarely pay off. Unless you have solid Intel the most likely outcome of this is that you have burned a draft pick and end up with a player that you will terminate before ever scoring you a point.
It is important to build depth across positions, especially specialist roles such as halves, fullback and hooker that historically can be more challenging to recruit for mid-season. To minimise risks to your team consider handcuffing your starting team with known backup players. A prime example of this would be to select Issac Luke in a late round should you have McInnes. Luke likely offers minimal value to other teams and therefore will be left however as a McInnes owner he offers an 80 minute hooker in the event of McInnes being unavailable to slot in without burning a termination on a week to week hooking prospect. A reliable backup player to cover your starting 13 will pay dividend over chasing a preseason rumour nine times out of ten.
Draft for your bench
Just like a real NRL squad you need impact off your bench and a solid scoring bench can get you that all important win.
NRLCEO assigns half points for each scoring play for players on the bench by default. For example a try is worth two points and a try assist is worth one. Interestingly single point plays such as Line Breaks and Line Break Assists are not halved and as such there are some players that are more valuable on the bench then others. This means drafting bench players on overall points scored is not the best method. During the later stages of your draft after you have filled your starting 13 consider this scoring and how it will impact your teams overall points. This is also valuable considerations when picking players for your bench on a weekly basis.
This analysis can be most appropriately explained through an example of two players:
| Starting 13 | Bench | % Single Point Scores | |||
| Player | 2019 Rank | 2019 Score | 2019 Rank | 2019 Score | |
| Boyd Cordner | 114 | 62 | 122 | 33 | 1% |
| Blake Green | 121 | 59 | 95 | 39 | 32% |
As a coach if you had filled your starting 13 and were simply drafting your reserves/bench based on total points scored in the previous season it would suggest the best option would be to draft Cordner however when analysing players by the appropriate bench scoring Blake Green is a much better bench prospect due to having a larger percentage of single point scoring plays.
Every point counts so ensure you crunch your numbers, draft accordingly and take out bragging rights for the 2020 season.
Robert Sim
Latest posts by Robert Sim (see all)
- Treat it like it may be your last - March 18, 2020
- Draft till the death and draft for your bench - February 4, 2020
- State of Origin – the Decider! - July 9, 2019
