Our gift to you is a team full of players to keep your eye on over the pre-season!

You’re welcome.

2012 has given us the mother of all bye systems which, if wanting to avoid a 0 from rounds 11 through to 13 means you can’t stack your team full of dream team friendly AFL teams (damn you, Demetriou).

With a little forward planning, what originally seemed harder than bedding Scarlett Johansson can now become a reality.

We can start by looking at which teams have byes during what round:

Round 11:
Adelaide Crows
Brisbane Lions
Greater Western Sydney Giants
North Melbourne Kangaroos
West Coast Eagles
Western Bulldogs

Round 12:
Collingwood Magpies
Essendon Bombers
Fremantle Dockers
Geelong Cats
Melbourne Demonds
Sydney Swans

Round 13:
Carlton Blues
Gold Coast Suns
Hawthorn Hawks
Port Adelaide Power
Richmond Tigers
St Kilda Saints

The most important element of the “how to avoid a donut through rounds 11 to 13″ strategy is not having players missing due to reasons other than a bye (eg. suspension, being dropped etc), meaning you’ll have to have 30 actively playing players by the end of round 10.

Come the start of round 11, you’ll need to plan and have your team looking like this:
Defenders: 2 R11 byes, 3/4 R12 byes, 4/5 R13 byes
Midfield: 2 R11 byes, 3 R12 byes, 3 R13 byes
Rucks: 2 R11 byes, 1 R12 bye, 1 R13 bye
Forwards: 2 R11 byes, 3/4 R12 byes, 3/4 R13 byes

To avoid a 0 in rounds 12 and 13 you’ll have 3 of your players with ruck/forward DPP eligibility with one going into the ruck with a round 11 bye and the other two in the forward line with a round 12 and 13 bye.

Remember, if you have a playing emergency in either of the bye rounds it means you’ll be getting a 0 in one of the other 2 rounds.

Good luck and happy planning!

And 2012 seems to be no different.

You’re going to have to decide pretty early what your main goal is (league win vs. overall) as the two will utilise very different strategies given the byes in rounds 11, 12 and 13.

Here’s a run down on what you need to know for 2012:

1. We’re still allowed up to 2 trades per week, as well as an added trade (3 in total) during round 11, 12 and 13.
2. We’re allowed to move dual position players as part of a trade without having a matching dual position player in the position we want to move them to
3. Trigger happy Monday morning traders can now reverse all changes made to their team during the week, returning it to how it was right after lockout
4. We now have 30 players in our team (down from 33 in 2011)
5. There will now be 18 team leagues
6. League games will start from round 3 and end at round 19 (yes, you’ll have to play league games during the 3 rounds of byes), with finals starting at round 20

Round 11:
Adelaide Crows
Brisbane Lions
Greater Western Sydney Giants
North Melbourne Kangaroos
West Coast Eagles
Western Bulldogs

Round 12:
Collingwood Magpies
Essendon Bombers
Fremantle Dockers
Geelong Cats
Melbourne Demonds
Sydney Swans

Round 13:
Carlton Blues
Gold Coast Suns
Hawthorn Hawks
Port Adelaide Power
Richmond Tigers
St Kilda Saints