Round 2 of the 2024 AFL Premiership Season kicks off this Thursday night with a monster early season clash at the MCG between St Kilda and Collingwood. St Kilda opened their campaign with a tough loss last week to Geelong, while Collingwood have had a disastrous start to their premiership defence with 2 losses. Both teams will be desperate to get their first premiership points of the year.
Draftstars continue to offer massive prize pools with the Thursday night main being worth $60,000 along with their usual variety of alternate contests:
- AFL $60,000+ Saints vs Magpies
- AFL $5,000+ Saints vs Magpies High Roller ($150 Entry)
- AFL $2,000+ Saints vs Magpies Fiver
- AFL $3,000+ Saints vs Magpies Mini ($2 Entry)
The AFL Star contest is back for 2024 and Draftstars are offering the biggest prize pool in Australian DFS history with a $1 million guaranteed final with $250,000 top prize! There are qualifiers and satellites running for every AFL match, while there will also be a sprinkling of qualifiers across other sports such as NRL and NBA.
Meanwhile the 1000 AFL Target contests are set to return to Draftstars for the first time since 2018. Enter the contest and hit the 1000-point barrier with your team to scoop the jackpot!
Betting Markets
St Kilda ($2.38) vs Collingwood ($1.56) Odds thanks to PlayUp
Points: 163.5
Line: Collingwood -8.5
If you’re looking to bet on the AFL this season, then you can bet with PlayUp by using the same account that you have at Draftstars. PlayUp are Australian owned and offer an strong range of AFL betting markets and offers, including Same Game Multis.
Additionally, we have a full Betting Preview for both games where we provide our best bet for the game as well as a great value Same Game Multi!
- St Kilda vs Collingwood Betting Preview
Weather
Perfect conditions for football this Thursday night. 21 degrees and 0% of rain means we can pick our fantasy teams without having to consider the impact of weather on the game.
Where to Attack?
The biggest play of the season in 2023 was targeting backs against the Saints. This trend continued in their first game of the season last week with the Saints opposition defenders racking up across the board. Max Holmes and Mitch Duncan both posted 99 point games, while Jake Kolodjashnij provided a huge value return with 92 points.
The Saints also gave up almost 3 pointers per player per game above league average to general forwards and with the Magpies as favourites in this game stacking up this position will be a sound play.
Game Script – Collingwood outside players (backs and wings) and forwards
VALUE PLAYS
Oleg Margov ($7,850) continues to play across the half back line and pushing up onto the wing, which is an elite role for this matchup as outlined above. We saw last year that Margov can hit a ceiling score of 70+, which is close to a 10x return at this price point.
Zak Jones ($9,580) comes in for his first game of the season as the Saints make a shock selection decision to drop Brad Crouch. The loss of Crouch will open up significant opportunity in the midfield with him typically attending 70+% of their centre bounces. This is where value will be found on the Saints end and looking at Jones as a potential replacement at this price point is a strong play. Alternatively, options such as Seb Ross ($10,080), Marcus Windhager ($11,860) and Mitch Owens ($10,160) would also be possible players who could see a boost.
Finlay Macrae ($8,840) saw his first game action coming on as the sub last week. It must be highlighted that this week he is a near automatic selection if he was to get a full game. The slate will be challenging to pinpoint value on and the reports our of the Magpies camp all preseason were praising the youngster as taking a big midfield role this year. He posted 27 points last week from just 26% game time last week.
MID PRICED PLAYS
Brayden Maynard ($12,580) has taken the lead role for the Magpies coming out of the backline to start this season posting back to back scores of 99 and 105 fantasy points. This has been the top matchup in the league for this role for the past 12 months and makes Maynard a lock and load play on this slate.
PREMIUM PLAYS
Nic Daicos ($17,430) has started right where he left off last season with back to back scores of 111 and 123 fantasy points. Matching up against the Saints will be one of the best spots all season he will find being able to take advantage of both inside and the hit them on the outside where they have leaked a league leading amount of points of over the last year. As long as you are comfortable with the value you can find on this slate I would be spending up to have Nic in the side. He is potential slate breaker on Thursday night.
Suggested Draftstars Lineup
Cheat Sheet
