2026 SuperCoach Early Byes: How Much Should You Care
Every SuperCoach pre-season follows the same script. You open the team picker with optimism, lock in a few obvious guns, sprinkle some rookies, and convince yourself this year you’re going to be calm, disciplined, and logical.
At some point in the pre-season you finally build a team you’re genuinely proud of. It’s balanced. It’s classy. It has guns, rookies, and just the right amount of “this midpricer is definitely about to break out” optimism. You take a screenshot, post it online… and sit back waiting for praise.
Then some smartie in the comments hits you with: “Have you thought about the early byes?” And just like that, your beautiful team starts to look less like a masterpiece… and more like a dog’s breakfast of donuts and red dots.
The 2026 early byes (and why they matter)
For 2026, the early bye rounds are:
Round 2: Brisbane, Carlton, Collingwood, Geelong
Round 3: Gold Coast, Hawthorn, Sydney, Bulldogs
Round 4: GWS and St Kilda
Just like always, those early bye rounds are Best 18. That’s the key rule, and it’s where most coaches either overreact completely… or underreact dangerously.
Best 18: the safety net or a trap
The comforting part is obvious: Best 18 means you don’t have to field a full 22. Missing players doesn’t automatically destroy your score. In fact, if you’ve built decent depth, you’re not really replacing a premium’s 115 with a rookie’s 45. You’re usually replacing that missing premium with your 19th best score, which might still be in the 60–70 range. That’s why the experienced coaches always say early byes “don’t matter.”
And they’re half right.
Early byes don’t matter if your structure holds up. They don’t matter if your rookies are playing. They don’t matter if you can still reach 18 scoring players comfortably.
Early byes should be a tie-breaker, not your game plan
This is also why early byes shouldn’t be the main thing determining your selections. If a player is clearly the best pick, the bye shouldn’t scare you off. However, early byes can be very useful as a tie-breaker. If you’re genuinely tossing up between two similarly priced players with similar roles and similar ceilings, the early bye can be the little nudge that helps you decide. It’s not a selection killer, but it’s definitely a selection separator.
The myth: “avoid all early bye premiums”
The biggest myth that comes out every pre-season is: “don’t start any premiums with early byes.” That advice is rubbish. Avoiding early bye premiums might reduce risk, but it also removes value and ceiling. You end up with a safe team that’s underpowered from Round 1, and you spend the first month trying to catch the coaches who simply picked the best scorers.
The bye isn’t the danger. Stacking is.
The real danger: stacking premiums in one bye
Stacking is what turns Best 18 into a problem. The damage compounds quickly because the more premiums you lose in the same week, the more junk scores you drag into your top 18.
To make it simple, let’s use rough but realistic numbers.
Say a genuine premium averages 115. In a Best 18 round, your 19th counted score might be around 70, and your 20th might be around 60. If you miss one premium, your “bye tax” isn’t the full 115 points. It’s 115 minus 70, which is about 45 points. Not ideal, but it’s also not season threatening, coaches lose that every second week by captaining someone in the wet and acting surprised when it ends in tears.
If you miss two premiums in the same bye round, you start counting scores around 70 and 60 instead of two 115s. That’s (115–70) + (115–60), which is 100 points. Still manageable, but now you’re bleeding meaningful rank if the field is better prepared.
At three missing keeper premiums, it gets ugly. Now you’re dragging even lower scores into your best 18, maybe something like a 50. The loss becomes (115–70) + (115–60) + (115–50) = 165 points. And that’s before the early-season chaos hits. A rookie gets managed, a player is a late out, someone becomes ‘managed’ and scores 28… and suddenly your Best 18 turns into Best 17.
That’s when seasons get ugly very quickly
How early byes can smash your overall rank
And this leads into the question every coach asks, even if they don’t admit it: what does that do to your overall rank?
Early season ranks are extremely sensitive. Everyone’s team is similar. Everyone has the same few core guns. There’s no fattened rookies, no complete team upgrades yet, and not many coaches have created big structural differences. That means a 100-point swing early doesn’t just move you a little. It can move you tens of thousands of ranking spots.
One poor early bye round can be the difference between sitting 4,000th after Round 4, or sitting 40,000th and telling everyone you’re “playing for leagues”.
Shared pain vs unique pain (ownership matters)
The real secret to early byes isn’t just avoiding points lost, it’s understanding shared pain versus unique pain.
Shared pain is when highly owned players miss. A perfect example is Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera. If he’s in 70–75% of teams and he’s out in Round 4, most of the competition is missing him too. You may lose points, but you won’t lose much relative ground, because everyone is wearing it. That bye is priced into the competition.
Unique pain is what kills rank. Unique pain is when your structure is different to the crowd, and you’re missing extra keepers that most other teams still have on field. That’s how you leak rank fast.
This is why I think early bye strategy ties directly into ownership. Picking highly owned players with early byes is usually fine, because the pain is shared. But where possible, I’d avoid having your PODs on early byes. PODs are meant to separate you. If your POD misses, you don’t just lose points, you lose separation and you suffer alone.
Good coaches also plan rookie byes
The best coaches take this concept one layer deeper. They don’t just check byes for their premiums and midpricers. They check byes for their rookies too. Rookies are what keep you getting to 18 scorers. If you load up on early-bye rookies as well as early-bye premiums, your depth collapses and suddenly the Best 18 safety net disappears. The good coaches spread their rookies across the bye rounds so that even when premiums miss, they can still field 18 without relying on perfect team selection luck.
The bottom line
So what’s the correct early bye advice for 2026?
Early byes should shape your team, not dictate it. Use them as a tie-breaker when you’re genuinely split between two players.
Be comfortable picking popular high-ownership players with early byes because the pain is shared. Avoid, where possible, having your PODs on early byes because unique pain destroys rank.
And don’t just spread your premiums, spread your rookies too, because Best 18 only works if you can actually get to 18 scorers.
If you do that, the early bye rounds become what they’re meant to be: a manageable speed bump. And if you do it better than the field, it becomes a speed bump you use to run over other coaches.
Bloody hate the early byes.
Currently have…
1 x premo missing Rd2 (Naicos)
2 x premo missing Rd3 (Gulden, Petracca)
3 x premo missing Rd4 (NWM, De Koning, Flanders)
I can live with Rd2 and 3 but I might have to do something about Rd4.
thats the problem, TDK is only 13% owned and your third premium missing for round 4, you are pulling up your 21st or 22nd best score for that round to cover him, where others are getting a premo score.
I think it’s NWM that’s in the gun Derek..
Using your excellent value equation, NWM sits at 115, TDK at 103 and I’m bullish on TDK.
I don’t think round 4 is worth worrying about. Everyone will have at least D1 missing and Flanders also. So one more premium isn’t the worst thing. I’m planning ahead to round 12. I’m making sure I don’t start anymore than 4 premiums on that bye. We may not have the depth to cover by that stage
Round 12 is the tough one alright
Hopefully plenty of ‘shared pain’ and we can get past it
I really really really really really really really fucking really really really needed to read this.
Like, really really really really really really.
Thank-you.
Great article again, really important points in there. I’ve reviewed the tiebreaker philosophy and made 2 changes to the team already.
A couple of interesting players for mine with an early bye. Petracca- with Rowell out and their early season draw I think it’s worth wearing the bye. And S Darcy (WB)- now Taylor is out Fox Sports says Laverde might have to play full back in their round 1 clash with GWS. If that’s the case Darcy might kick 12 and score 200 points.
ive got Petracca in my team just to have some access to the easy games Suns have in Round 1 and 2, he was the cheapest option.
I don’t agree.
1 premo out in each of the early rounds is equal to about 200points thrown away after 4 rounds and about 50,000 ranking positions. Rookies are unproven at that stage and many who start full of adrenaline and pump out a 60+ in their first game back it up with low 30’s or 40’s.
At the start most teams have 12 premos or less so the early byes are tactically the best way to get ahead and you do that by having as many premos on field as possible.
Paying 600k for a bloke who averages 115 gets you a bloke who will only average 86.2 over the first 4 rounds if he scores 115 in every game that he plays = 3×115 plus a big fat donut
When you consider that most early bye premos will have a 2nd bye you’d have to be crazy to start with them if you want to have any chance at all of winning some cash off Rupert.
the whole concept is the premium score of 115 is replaced with a rookie score of 60-70. Maybe on a bad day that replacement score is 45-50, but remember it is best 18 so you should have a few bites at the cherry.
so if a premium scores 3x 115 plus the donut is replaced with a 60 = 103 average over 4 rounds.
it would be very hard building a team without any early bye players (i tried), if you do, i believe you will have an inferor team to start the year.
what i’m saying, be aware of the early byes, and don’t have too many in any round
I think that you are missing the point Derek.
Firstly according to Supercoach data “A solid cash cow (e.g., Blake Howes in 2024) often averages in the low-to-mid 60s.”
Last Year
I. Kako (55.2), S. Lalor (55.2), X. Lindsay (50.6) – Their aves in first 3 games Kako 52 – Lalor 52 – Lindsay 57 including a 9
M. Reid (68.8), C. Hall (66.8), H. Garcia (65.6) –
Reid first 4 game ave was 76 pumped up to by a good final qrtr and 112 v eagles in rnd 3 – Hall only played 2 of first 4 -Garcia only once over 54 in first 4 games
D. Curtin (72.9), L. Ashcroft (72.9), H. Langford (71.1)
Fist 4 games ave Curtin 65 (inc. a 26) Ashcroft 69 (inc a 36) – Langford missed the 2nd game and ave 48 in his first 3
N. Madden (86.0), K. McAuliffe (81.6)
First game for Madden was rnd 13 and he only played 3 times – McAuliffe only played rnd 9-13 inc easy scores again WCE, NM, ESS
Based on last year the best Rookie averages come with mid season debuts and the ‘Premo Rookies’ ave 55-65 in first 4 games.
Most teams will have 12 or less starting premiums and all of the ‘best rookies’ (ave 55-65) to make up their ‘Best 18’ Some of those Premo rookies will have byes which means you’ll be relying on 2nd string rookies 30-45 ave to make an 18 man squad.
Your best rookie scores are already in your best 18 so when you have a prem with a bye you can’t just add another prem-rookie coz there aren’t any left which means every Premo 115 with a bye is replaced by a slow burner rookie 30-45 = 75 p/player p/game
If you only have one premo with a bye in each of the early bye rounds you will only lose 225 points BUT if you also have a ‘prem rookie’ out in each bye round you will lose an extra 30pts p/round = – 105 pts p/week or 315 pts over the 3 byes.
That is with only 1 premo and 1 pre rookie missing each round,
Anybody who starts a team with Premos with early byes is really just planning to play for leagues only from the start
Good points. I think we are agreeing that having too many early bye players isn’t good, if I could I would have nil, but I can’t see that being a realistic option. Limit the pain.
Have you factored in the best 18 means you can have all the non-players on bench and hopefully 23 ‘on-field’ meaning you automatically get best 18 without having to ‘loop’ players on field. SuperCoach automatically picks the best scores to include.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Whether no bye premos is a better option to start and how that tracks score wise into the season. I just can’t see myself fading all bye players, especially in the midfield, with 7 of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 all having early byes.
what is the target score for early bye rounds ?
Last year, if you went over 1900 that was a good score. Basically 100pts per player, incl Captain
David, 3 of the last winners said the byes were not the most important factors when picking the starting teams. Check the Goat series by DR in YouTube .They have actually won so goes to show it isn’t a hindrance .
Of course you can’t be as stupid as missing multiple premos per round but if your premos don’t miss early rounds, they will miss the late ones. And I don’t think it’s a good usage of trades to transfer them out just to avoid the bye.
You should set your team so the rookie you have on field can dish at least 60, also hoping the premo has a spike score that cancels the loss.
110-60=50 points lost, but if Daicos goes on and scores 130 the next game, you are only 30 points worse off, compared to a player with a low ceiling without bye.
Therefore loading your starting team with only non byes players will limit you considerably
That’s a great point Jeannot, there are the regular premiums and then there are the Daicos type premiums that make up the difference in a couple of weeks
Fair point but as always what people say and what they actually do can be two very different things. Maybe early byes wasn’t their primary focus but perhaps their starting lineups only featured 1 prem with a bye early.
If I was pedantic and thought that I would have a chance at winning I would probably go and have a look at their starting teams to see how many players they actually started that had early byes AND when their teams entered the top 100.
From memory I think most top finishing players state that they got their decisive jump during the byes, likely they are referring to the later byes but that does suggest that advantage can also be gained from frugal management of the early byes.
In my best year ever (a decade or more ago) I finished 110th or similar and was in the top 50 with 3 weeks to go but out of trades. That year I was ranked below 30,000 after the first 3-4 weeks.
Ah yes, I remember the days of ” the top 0%” ranking. Didnt even know there was such a thing as zero percent! It’s a while back now but we can always dream of getting back there, hey maybe this year! 🙂 I’m sure there were a lot more players back then (or is that what every older generation tells the younger generation ?)
*participants*
Love this Derek!
Home run
I have this nasty feeling this year about the byes that I am missing something? It just feels like it’s more uneven that Adel, Rich, Frem, North, Port, Ess, Melb and WCE play more games. Besides postponed games I can’t really remember this in previous SC years. Am I right in thinking that? What were the other opening round years been like for actual SC games played?
And then even if you do stack your side with players with those teams with one extra game,(particularly premos) then R12 could pose a real problem as well (Adel, North, Port players out) So maybe it evens itself out somewhat?
Round 12 looks a tough week.