Phillip "Molly" Malone is one of the most prolific Web pundits on Aussie Rules footy with his blog Mollyzine and podcast Molly's Monday Machination. He's an engineer and a Hawk fan, and you'll see his name everywhere.
CB AFL Dream Team and SuperCoach Podcast #96: Monday night footylover18
The notorious footylover18 was m0nty’s guest on this Monday evening. As always when these two get together there are fireworks, especially when discussing the topic of “What is wrong with Dream Team?”
The debate was germinated in the late withdrawal of Hamish McIntosh on the weekend, which made m0nty so livid that he committed to advocating that the Dream Team competition move to an unlimited trade model in an effort to completely ban donuts from future competitions. No prisoners, and no donuts! Footylover18 defends the existing structure from m0nty’s multifarious probing attacks. Then the two boys chew over what should happen with the entry of the Gold Coast FC next year with byes and a whole host of fresh players.
That was supposed to be the whole show, but footylover18 launches a counterattack on m0nty’s own DT efforts, pinning him down on exactly why he has chosen to put his neck out chasing a unique-flavoured team with plenty of mature-aged rookies. m0nty fires back with his own salvoes about fl18’s pet strategies, including going too safe to win the cars. Then it gets really good! 
There’s no round review given this is a special show - there will be a normal show later in the week with Molly - but footylover18 does end up giving his opinion on Ryan Hargrave towards the end of the show.
May 18th, 2010 at 1:04 am
Haha. Footylover18 your all over it, really didnt let Monty get away with his poo ranking ;). Dont worry Monty happens to the best of us.
Great to hear a difference of opinion and realise that im on the right track with my strategy etc.
Good job guys.
May 19th, 2010 at 10:42 am
Great cast footylover is great value and tells it how it is, good banter going on as well. Get him in for more specials.
May 19th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Maybe next time u two are together we need a moderator??
May 19th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
You really took the wrong lesson away from the prospectus’ “ultimate dream team” there Monty. Most people read that team, with it’s ridculous pre-emptive trading of popular injury struck premiums, highly obscure perfect captain picks and often counter-intuitive player selection and realised that it was literally impossible to pick the “perfect” team without the benefit of hindsight so you’re best of playing the percentages rather than going for the “perfect” team. If you want to pick the perfect team of unique players, you need to get right on not just one or two guys but on 6 or 10 players. This year you would have had to be picking (in SC at least, sorry I don’t follow DT scores) guys who were on basically no one’s radar like Russell, Banfield, Hannebury, Houlihan, Maric, Sidebottom, Chaplin, Edwards, Jack and Grundy while avoiding almost every “smokey” pick that some people were getting hot on like Macdonald, Cotchin, Masten, Armitage, Vince and every North Melbourne forward line player priced between $250 and $350k. Oh, and you would have also had to pick a whole lot of “bigfooty” players who DID turn out to be the best possible buys in their position like hodge, barlow, trengove, malceski, sandilands, goddard, ablett etc.
It’s LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to pick the perfect team without the benefit of hindsight and picking random “risky” players in the vague hope that the exact combination you pick will somehow be the perfect team. That’s a recipe for, well, your team Monty and I think hiding behind “I was taking a risk” is a copout. There’s a difference between taking a risk and throwing darts at players hoping some of them will be the next Andrew Collins.
May 19th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
@JJ Agreed. Thats my thought as well.
May 19th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Saying it’s a cop-out is a bit much, JJ. Are you saying that I don’t believe my own arguments, that I have been lying to you? I would have thought that half an hour of me arguing the point should have convinced you that I actually do believe in them.
Sure, no one is going to be able to pick the ultimate team in its entirety. But just one or two of those perfect uniques would go a long way towards getting you a jump on the pack. Perhaps I went a bit overboard, but I still think there is great merit in trying to pick a Russell or a Howlett.
It will be interesting to see if this year’s winners are yet more “BigFooty teams” or whether they nail some uniques to get that extra advantage.
May 20th, 2010 at 10:45 am
with the copout tendency - i think there’s a tendency for people to write off the responsibility for making poor picks by saying “it was a risky pick” (instead of a bad one) as if the 5% chance that the pick could have come off justifies making it in the first place. What I’m saying is that those lotto picks are poor PRECISELY because of that risk. People justify picks like Kerr, Ottens, Luenberger, lockyer, Campbell, O’Bryan, Schoenmakers, Murphy, Rioli (esp as a riewolt trade), sylvia, Macdonald, brennan etc. etc. by saying “it’s a risk”. But with all of them the revealed poor form was almost entirely predictable with foresight, and in fact was the exact reason why those picks were “risks”.
There comes a point where a pick can’t be justified by saying “well, it was a risk, it didn’t work, move on” on the vague hope that you could have picked up pocket aces. To have a hope in this game you have to play the percentages to a certain extent because, like I said, the guys that actually turn out to be those amazing unique picks are unique simply because it was virtually impossible to see their development with foresight - if it was possible then they would be “bigfooty” players becuase people would have clued on to them.
And I repeat, a large portion of the very best value/improver picks WERE the popular guys. Barlow, Hodge, Malceski, Kennely, Waters, Maguire, Trengove, Hille, Betts, Carrots, Bastinac, Podsiadly, Ball, Gia have all ultimately justified their initial popularity and in many cases it has proved to be literally impossible to make better picks than these guys at the relevant price points. The crowd was right!
And not trying to be personal because this isn’t just about you, it’s about the attitude of “unique at all cost” which is actually somewhat prevalent, but if you were hoping for your team to be a flag bearer for uniqueness then it’s done on the opposite. If, somehow, you had picked even some of Russell, Chaplin, Houlihan, Banfield, Jordie Macenzie, James Macdonald, Hannebury, grundy etc. etc. then yeah, you might have been able show that the wisdom of the crowd wasn’t everything. But the fact that even you, who has far more fantasy and football knowledge than most of us, was unable to nail a SINGLE unique impressive improver shows how futile the effort is imo.
* howlett wasn’t exactly a unique smokey. I know quite a few people that had him at the start and a lot more that have him now after a round 7 downgrade.