World 15 Discussion

[Nige]

To make sure I actually understand everything.

So are we basically just gonna have to trade or delist players to fit under the cap if we're over?

[JBs-Hawks]

Yep for example

You could trade 3 70 avg players for 1 90 avg player
Or trade for draft picks etc etc

[Nige]

Ah okay, got it. Looking to offload a few players anyway. We're low on forwards after Clancee Pearce, Dayne Beams and Danny Stanley all lost DPP, and so we're probably going to be trading a fair few mids and defenders. 

[Purple 77]

Big fan of the cap reduction, as it forms yet another similarity of the AFL and will help, however minimal, to even the comp.

I would personally prefer the structure now (4, 4, 1, 4, 2), as with defenders and forwards, it is down to strategy (and a bit of luck) to make sure you have enough of each.

For example, in the international draft, I purposely got recycled players so I could insure I had 4 defenders/forwards each week. Players such as Andrejs Everitt, Jake King, Setanta O'hAilpin, Sam Lonergan, even Nathan Brown.

Absolutely none of them stars, but they come in handy (the first 3 have played at some stage), and I haven't named anyone OOP this year and I also have a strong reserves side for it.

I have noticed (don't ask me how) that about half of the teams named this year have both their interchange players midfielders, so it is not as common as one might think. Take Pacific as an example, I think 3 weeks in a row they played 6 forwards...

So I think strategic recruitment should be rewarded in the sense of naming 4 forwards and defenders each week. But understand if a change happens.

[Maca24]

Agree wholeheartedly with purple.
Structure should stay at 4-4-1-4-2

[Jukes]

Gotta love having no depth so we fit under the cap :P

I agree with a lowering of the cap, but I reckon we should retain the current formation.

[CrowsFan]

Couple of things to discuss! Both fairly important....


1. Possible Change in format

Currently, we are 4D-4M-1R-4F-2I

But, there seems to be a huge shift towards midfield classified players (best illustrated by SC and DT changing from 7-6-2-7 to 6-8-2-6).

So should we change it up?

I think 3D-6M-1R-3F-2I is too much swinging towards midfield...

I think my preference would be for everyone to have either:

3D-5M-1R-4F-2I

Or

4D-5M-1R-3F-2I

^ you could do one or the other each week (so its a choice).

Thoughts?

Honestly I don't think the formation needs to change, if people want to use more mids then they can just use them as the interchange, meaning they can field 6 at the moment anyway. If we up that to 5 mid positions then people could be theoretically be fielding 7 mids out of 15 spots (47%), whereas in SC/DT you are fielding 8 out of 22 positions (only 36%). So honestly I feel that is far too much midfield use in the team.

If anything I think 2 rucks would be a better rule to implement (the fact that I have 4 playing rucks has nothing to do with it :-X), pretty much every single club in the AFL now plays 2 rucks, so why don't we?

2. Reduction in Points Cap

The competition became MUCH more uneven this year, with 3 teams a cut above, and 4 teams a cut below.

I don't really mind this - as it rewards coaches for good trading decisions, and eventually the team will decline. Except I'm not a huge fan of teams having lots of reserve players, while others struggle to field a team.

Also, it would be unrealistic long term for players to stick with a team where they are not getting a game. Teams would kill to have players like Mitch Duncan, Bernie Vince or Brian Lake in there teams - and not even that. If this was real life, and Brian Lake wasn't getting a game, he'd change teams.

Last year there was a cap of 33,000 points (the total number of points scored by your players in the WXV 17 Rounds had to be less than that). Which for most teams this simply wasn't an issue. Would like to reduce this to 30,000.

What does that mean? After 10 Rounds, the teams on track to break this cap are:

Berlin
Cairo
Cape Town
London
Mexico City
Sao Paulo
Toronto

Noting many of these would fall under naturally once retirements and delistings are counted.

... but where is Buenos Aires? Well, there reserves side is in such a mess they don't go over the limit. Meaning they are vulnerable to injuries and retirements, and that's how it should be IMO. It also encourages teams to trade players for picks.


I think if we don't have the reduction in points cap, we would have to be really, really strict with trades. I'd much rather trades be done freely....

Mitch Duncan has played 3 games for me this year, but struggled in the spotlight. He will get more games when he starts developing more consistency. He is only averaging 77 after all, not all that great for a mid, but he is important to our future and he knows that.

Regarding the cap reducing from 33,000 to 30,000... You have showed 7 teams are currently (will be come EOS) over the cap, which makes up 39% (2 in 5 teams) of the competition. Seems a bit over the top if 40% of the teams have to weaken their squad each season. Maybe a small decrease in cap, but I think 3,000 is too much! Just out of interest, how many clubs would be over the cap if it stayed at 33,000?

[ossie85]

If anything I think 2 rucks would be a better rule to implement (the fact that I have 4 playing rucks has nothing to do with it :-X), pretty much every single club in the AFL now plays 2 rucks, so why don't we?


Regarding the cap reducing from 33,000 to 30,000... You have showed 7 teams are currently (will be come EOS) over the cap, which makes up 39% (2 in 5 teams) of the competition. Seems a bit over the top if 40% of the teams have to weaken their squad each season. Maybe a small decrease in cap, but I think 3,000 is too much! Just out of interest, how many clubs would be over the cap if it stayed at 33,000?

Only 33 rucks played in round 10, and 2 rucks each would be 36. So I'd have to emphatically say no on that one!

I'll pull out the cap results for each team :) But remember most will fall under just from standard retirements and delistings

[Nails]

To be honest I don't care what the changes are as long as they guarantee the Armadillos next year's premiership.

[CrowsFan]

If anything I think 2 rucks would be a better rule to implement (the fact that I have 4 playing rucks has nothing to do with it :-X), pretty much every single club in the AFL now plays 2 rucks, so why don't we?


Regarding the cap reducing from 33,000 to 30,000... You have showed 7 teams are currently (will be come EOS) over the cap, which makes up 39% (2 in 5 teams) of the competition. Seems a bit over the top if 40% of the teams have to weaken their squad each season. Maybe a small decrease in cap, but I think 3,000 is too much! Just out of interest, how many clubs would be over the cap if it stayed at 33,000?

Only 33 rucks played in round 10, and 2 rucks each would be 36. So I'd have to emphatically say no on that one!

I'll pull out the cap results for each team :) But remember most will fall under just from standard retirements and delistings

Haha figured that would be the case. I was just trying to say it since I have so many... :P

[ossie85]

Ok, the projected total of each team based on the first 10 rounds is...

Mexico City: 35,153
Cairo: 34,269
Sao Paulo: 32,737
London: 32,154
Berlin: 30,955
Toronto: 30,165
Cape Town: 30,092
Buenos Aires: 28,120
Seoul: 28,038
Moscow: 27,841
New York: 27,589
PNL: 27,027
Tokyo: 26,340
Dublin: 25,359
Wellington: 24,128
Pacific: 23,441
New Delhi, 20,910
Beijing: 19,120

As you can see, there is a correlation between ladder position and points scored, but it isn't a great one. The goal isn't to punish the best teams, but increase competitiveness of the lower teams. Mexico City recruited fantastically, and Beijing terribly, but now Beijing are almost literally half as good the Suns!

[Nails]

I'd say GWS/Melbourne aren't half as good as Geelong

Therefore I don't see an issue if we're attempting to make it AFL-esque

[Nige]

I was waiting to see how high we were, but I expected that tbh. If this was the end of the season and we used the team with the 6th most points (as I think was mentioned before). The cap would be reduced to Toronto's 30,165... And that means we're 4,104 over. ::) That's upsetting considering the proposed reduction was from 33,000 to 30,000. :(

Looks like we'll have some trading to do. However I expect a couple of delistings just looking at our list. 

[roo boys!]

Hard to have an opinion about these kinds of things without being strongly biased to suit your club, eg Beijing obviously want the cap lowered, higher teams in general want to be rewarded for their good recruiting, CF is trying to manipulate the rules purely to show off his amazing ruck division :P etc

From where I sit I believe the positional changes could potentially work, but Purple's point about recruiting well to establish strong defence and forward lines is very valid. This is why I'm leaning towards perhaps keeping it as it is, but if CD continue to remove more and more DPP statuses leaving too many pure midfielders then I'm all for an increased interchange spot, with the ability to name either 3 forwards or defenders each week as you proposed earlier.

eg either 4-4-1-3-3 or 3-4-1-4-3, depending on your team's strengths.

This means you can play an extra midfielder if you're that way inclined, as I imagine most teams would be, but if you don't have a lot of midfield depth and instead pride yourself on a strong defence and forward lines then you could play 4 defenders and 4 forwards still (1 on the bench) or even 4 defenders 6 forwards.

Flexibility in the team structure can be very handy IMO as coaches will probably become more and more reluctant to trade meaning the weaker teams without depth can rebuild to an extent but will still struggle from time to time to field all positions.

Obviously every coach (except maybe Nigey/ML *cough Petrenko cough*) tries to avoid playing players OOP as much as possible as it is a fairly harsh punishment (harsh but fair). This flexible structure means that less and less players will be played OOP hopefully.

Which leads me onto the second point, points cap.

At Toronto we sit right about where the cap is potentially going to be reduced to and well under the 33k so either way we should be fine following delistings/retirements etc. But for someone like the Suns 5000 is a lot of points to be stripping from your team that you have worked so hard to build!

I understand it is a tough position for the lower clubs, and more often than not it is new coaches that have come in and inherited teams decimated by poor recruiting and trading by previous coaches who are no-where to be seen now. But I don't believe it is doom and gloom at all for any clubs in the WXV. They all have very capable coaches who are very knowledgable in regards to fantasy footy and they will guide their clubs to success. Wellington were a big force last year and injuries out of their control have not helped in the slightest, but they focussed on gaining a lot of talent through the draft last year and they could be back up pushing the top 4 in the very near future. NDT, despite some ordinary trading off season have a strong young list led by blokes such as Mullet and Vlastuin. Pacific have a strong coaching combo (yes that's you Jaybag) and Rocky will lead them back to the top, and Toga/Q's re-haul of Beijing is already looking promising.

In summary, I believe the WXV is in fact a more even comp than the AFL and the teams down the bottom now won't be there for long. Keep the cap for now.

[ossie85]

This is fantastic discussion from everybody btw :)

What is most clear that this is something we would need to vote for - as we are getting pretty strong opinions on all sides!


The cap is something I do believe we need - just a question of how much really. I would really like to eventually have an actual salary cap (where players are paid certain amounts for certain time periods) - but haven't been able to work out a way of doing that yet! (Don't worry, its not happening any time soon).