SuperCoach 2023: Should I Start With A Loophole Player & Who To Pick?

A loophole player is essential to a successful SuperCoach season but starting a forced loophole, preferably a duel-position player, can be dangerous as well. Loophole players enable coaches to have a second shot at a captain. Let me first explain how this works before I go into why picking the wrong loophole player could be dangerous. Remember, your captain’s score will double every round. A coach can select a player playing early in the round as vice-captain and if they play well, they can move a non-playing player onto the field (the loophole), select this player as captain and have a premium player you actually want on the field, moved to the bench.

Please remember to select that premium player moved to your bench as your emergency in order to get his score on-field. Also, your non-playing player must have their team’s game after your vice-captain plays. This will result in your captain scoring a 0 and your vice-captain having his score double. Obviously, you should only do this if your vice-captain has an amazing game. It’s a great trick, which does have some risks. You need to make sure that there is no chance that the non-playing player will play. Otherwise, if they are subbed on in the fourth quarter for example and scores 10 points, the loophole will fail and you will have a massive 20-point captain score for the week.

At first glance, starting a loophole sounds amazing, as it guarantees you a second shot at a great score in round 1. However, it’s usually something that I stay clear from, as usually have loophole options in round 2 anyway. Although, I am reconsidering my stance on this entering the 2023 SuperCoach season. Picking a player such as $102,400 RUC/FWD Nicholas Madden, who is the current popular loophole option. Madden is injured for most of the year and a player that even if he wasn’t injured, would likely not play in 2023 anyway and as a result, I believe picking him is a stupid idea. Yes, it means that you will have a loophole every week and GWS do play a lot of late games in the round throughout the year.

However, you’re stunting your rookie cash generation, you’re forcing a hole in your side when trades start to run out and it will hurt if a ruckman is missing for your finals. The bye rounds will be worse for you, and we have 4 of those this year, if you have a player that you know will never play on your bench and remember, you only have one spare ruckman on your bench. If one of your main two rucks is missing and you have no trades left, you’re going to be hating your round 1 loophole choice. Starting someone as cheap as Madden will also make it difficult if you do want to trade him out as well, as you cannot downgrade a player literally at a basement price. You would need to upgrade to another rookie.

Therefore, if you’re going to be starting a loophole, as I will likely be this year, please select someone who will eventually play for you. There will be many impressive rookies who will not be selected in round 1 but will likely be selected later on. Players such as Blake Drury $102,400 FWD/MID, Josh Sinn $123,900 FWD/MID, Matthew Johnson $123,900 MID and Josh Weddle $130,800 DEF, could all miss their team’s opening match for various reasons. However, they will likely debut at some point. Fremantle’s Nathan O’Driscoll was a player who performed quite well in last year’s pre-season, was an early draft pick and was touted to play early. However, it wasn’t as early as round 1. Instead, O’Driscoll made his debut the week later and earned coaches $273,000 while covering both DEF & MID as a DDP player from round 2, all the way up until round 8. It was clear O’Driscoll would play in 2022 but we just didn’t know when. As a result, he was the perfect round 1 loophole and still enabled coaches to have the other rookie benefits. My team is finished bar one position – my loophole. It will depend on which players are not selected who I believe will still play this year.