Dear Footy Tragics,

Over the next four weeks, I will be advising you on how to carefully construct your dreamteam for season 2010. This article is written for those of you who have consistently struggled to force your way up the dreamteam rankings due to what I would call “common mistakes made”.

One thing I noticed time and time again last year analysing the large number of teams that were submitted to me in 2009, was that many people were selecting their players in the wrong position. For example, Shaun Higgins was a very popular and successful dreamteam selection in 2009. However, given that he was available to be selected as either a forward or midfielder, why did 30% of all dreamteams submitted in 2009 have Higgins as a midfielder? Higgins should have been selected as a forward. While this may seem an obvious mistake to many of us, it was clearly the most common mistake I saw in 2009 dreamteams.

You may now be wondering; why does it matter where we select Higgins? The answer lies in your overall team make up, where we select 9 forwards and 9 backs, but only 8 midfielders in our squad of 30 players. Firstly, this break up of players seems strange to me, given the way footy is now played with most teams running a rotating midfield of 10 - 12 players. This means that approximately 50% of all AFL players are virtually midfielders, rotating on and off the ground. Unfortunately, I cannot control the make up of dreamteam so we must work around it.

We all want to fill our squads with dreamteam stars, but the majority of these stars are available as midfielders only. Dominant dreamteam players such as Gary Ablett, Dane Swan, Jimmy Bartel, Leigh Montagna, Lenny Hayes, Bryce Gibbs, Sam Mitchell and Brad Sewell can only be selected as midfielders.

What all this means is that most dreamteams end up with a first class midfield, but a shaky defence or forward line (or sometimes both). This often results in the dreaded 0, which is usually caused by either a wobbly defence or forward line. By picking a player such as Shaun Higgins as a forward we can not only have him in our side, we can also choose another 8 quality midfielders.

Good luck for season 2010!