Note: Check out Toby’s Team Selection Wrap for Round 3, published @ 6:30pm today!!!

Dear Footy Tragics,
AFL Rd 2 - Bombers v Dockers

With Round 3 fast approaching, the vast majority of dream team relevant players are now about to either increase or decrease in price. For many dreamteam coaches, this is the perfect week to “fix up” your team and insert those players you must have into your team. Not surprisingly, the team here at Footy Tragic has been inundated with trading questions this week. Questions such as: Should I dump one of my premium forwards for Jonathan Brown? Should I swap David Hille for Mark Seaby? Should I trade out Mitch Clark before his price plummets? Should I dump Kurt Tippett after two average games?

My advice to you is to put a trading strategy in place for this season, before you offload or insert any players into your team. When it comes to dreamteam, failing to plan is definitely planning to fail.

In this article I will discuss three trading strategies and highlight the benefits and drawbacks with each strategy.

STRATEGY 1 - Save at least one trade for every one week remaining in the season

Benefits:

  • You will always have trades available to cover for injured premiums.
  • Sets you up nicely for a private league win as you will come home like a steam train.

Drawbacks:

  • You may start the season slowly as you need to conserve your trades for later in the season.
  • You may fall into the trap of being overly conservative, thus finding you have surplus trades at the end of the season, which are wasted swapping one premium for another later in the season.

STRATEGY 2 - Trade heavily early in the season to set up your team

Benefits:

  • You can “fix up” an ordinary initial squad of 30 players quickly.
  • You will set up a solid team of 22 quality players early in the season.

Drawbacks:

  • You may run out of trades later in the year if your premiums are hit by injury.
  • You run the risk of dumping your cash cows too soon, thus not allowing them to hit their peak value before trading them out.

STRATEGY 3 - Save your trades early and then trade heavily between rounds 6 - 15

Benefits:

  • You give your cash cows time to increase in value before trading them out.
  • Underperforming premiums such as Dean Cox and Alan Didak should be ripe for the picking by Round 8 or 9.

Drawbacks:

  • This strategy is very difficult if you have made critical errors with your initial squad of 30 players and your team needs “fixing” in the early rounds.
  • If you trade too heavily in the middle rounds, you may run out of trades later in the season.

You may choose to implement one of these strategies, a combination of the above strategies or your own personal strategy. The important element here is not which strategy you choose, but the fact that you have a trading strategy in place that you will stick to.

From a personal perspective, I don’t have Jonathan Brown in my team. While I would love to squeeze him into my side, I’m not prepared to offload one of my premium forwards and one of my cash cows (two trades), to get him in. I’m well aware that Brown is leading all comers after 138 points in Round 1 and 141 points in Round 2, but, if I bring in Brown for Round 3, I don’t get those 279 points credited to my team retrospectively. Brown has blitzed against Eric Mackenzie (West Coast) and Bret Thornton (Carlton), but I don’t think he will find it as easy against Troy Chaplin (Port Adelaide) and Brian Lake (Western Bulldogs) over the next two weeks. As any good investment manager will tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. While bringing Jonathan Brown into my team might make me feel better this weekend, it’s not in my teams best long term interests. I’ve got a team of 30 players to manage and only 20 trades to use over 22 weeks. I refuse to deviate from my trading strategy under any circumstances.

You will be tempted to waver from your strategy at times throughout the season, but patience is the key. My advice is to select your trading strategy, stick to it and be as flexible as an iron bar.

Good luck!