by poisoncup Sun Sep 04, 2022 8:55 pm
Some great ranks here. Well done, everyone.
A disappointing season for me. After ranking around 330 last year, I finished at 2412 pending updates this year. Some reflections on what went wrong:
* I was way too conservative with trades early on. It meant that I missed some cows who ultimately turned out to be no-brainers like May and Tago. The huge injury toll of last year + some fears that there'd be lots of late withdrawals due to COVID meant that my strategy was to hold on to trades early and make a move at the end of the season. I did improve ranks towards the end, but nowhere near as many as I thought I would. COVID and injuries didn't hit anywhere near what I expected, and it would've been possible for lots of teams to have burned all their trades early on but still have enough players to play with to put up good scores.
* Chose some of the wrong cows early-ish. Taaffe, Martin, Tuilagi, Bullemor, Amone, etc. Guys who seemed OK choices on paper, but were actually terrible. I really needed to rely on the eye test more.
* I brought in some players at the exact wrong time. Turbo, Ponga and Papi all got season ending injuries the week I brought them in, losing me points, money and trades. CTR roulette didn't really happen for me this year. But WFB roulette kind of did.
* I over valued squad balance at the beginning. The aforementioned concerns with COVID and injury meant that I prioritised having cover for every position from the beginning. Cover still seems important to me, but not THAT important at the start when ample trades can rescue you in a pinch. This lead me to starting with Erin Clark to have HOK cover, who was OK while he lasted, but I could've had a higher scoring Tago for cheaper with some extra cash to splash around the remainder of my squad. Next year I won't be placing as high a value on cover early on.
* I gambled and failed in 'catching up' in the Byes and it lead me to bringing in players who were ultimately duds or dud-adjacent and took up the spot of potentially much better players, e.g. Mahoney, B. Smith (got suspended immediately), as well as keeping duds way too long, e.g. Ilias who scored 0 in Round 17 anyway, and Te Maire Martin, who didn't play at all.
* I missed both Cook and Murray. Could never quite work out a way to bring them in, and I'd hide behind the couch each week as they racked up another reliably excellent score.