Welcome to Round 14 of the 2024 AFL Premiership Season where we return to a more traditional kick off on Friday night as four teams have the bye. That won’t slow our daily fantasy action, however, as we get a crucial matchup between the Brisbane Lions and St Kilda at the Gabba. These two teams are sitting 13th and 14th on the ladder and two wins outside of the top eight, so the loser of this matchups season will likely be all but over for 2024.
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 $50,000+ Lions vs Saints
- AFL $5,000+ Lions vs Saints High Roller ($150 Entry)
- AFL $2,000+ Lions vs Saints Fiver
- AFL $3,000+ Lions vs Saints 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
Brisbane ($1.12) vs St Kilda ($6.00)
Points: 159.5
Line: Brisbane -33.5
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 Brisbane vs St Kilda Betting Preview for the game where we provide our best bet for the game as well as a great value Same Game Multi!
Weather
22 degrees and mostly. Let’s play!
Where to Attack?
Brisbane is one of the hardest teams in the league to score against from a fantasy perspective and they are heavy favourites in this matchup at home. Everything screams full Brisbane team stacks in this matchup and usually in that situation you would look to stack up their opponents backline, but in this matchup St Kilda concede the most points in the league to backs. We saw how this can play out last week when every back on the Gold Coast team appeared to go for over 100 fantasy points against the Saints last week.
Stack the Lions everywhere!
Game Script – Brisbane defenders, midfielders and forwards
VALUE PLAYS
Ari Schoenmaker ($6,000) gets the call up this week to make his debut and looks to be starting on the ground so the sub watch risk is significantly reduced. He will be replacing Wanganeen-Milera, which will leave plenty of possessions in the Saints backline to be soaked up by the remaining players. While Schoenmaker is a great value play as a half back at minimum price, it does prevent you from stacking up two Brisbane backs in the best matchup in the league, so if you prefer to fade Ari you can look to Brandon Starcevich ($6,870) at a similar price point or spend up further to the mid-priced Connor McKenna ($11,280) who showed ridiculous upside last week with an 80 point first half.
Ryan Lester ($8,850)… speaking of cheap Brisbane backs, Ryan Lester has shown us upside before and stands out as a nice option to save salary in a matchup the will give Brisbane backs every opportunity to hit their ceiling scores.
MID PRICED PLAYS
Oscar McInerney ($12,350) it is not only backs against St Kilda that stand out as an elite matchup as rucks have also been having a field day against them all season as well. The Saints have given up over 20 points per game above league average from their last 10 contests, which is almost double the next highest team during that same period – an astonishing stat. The Big O on the other hand is incredibly stingy from a fantasy perspective so there are plenty of better options to pay up for than Rowan Marshall on this slate and rostering McInerney is a nice safe play with a matchup providing a lot of upside.
PREMIUM PLAYS
Dayne Zorko ($17,710) has already posted a 184 point game this season and a 148 point game. He is taking full advantage of his role across half back and as we saw last week with Sam Flanders for the Suns who went for over 160 points against the Saints, there isn’t a better matchup in the league for this role. It would be much easier to roster Zorko if he had midfielder eligibility as well, but beggars can’t be choosers and I expect him to break the slate in this contest.
Jarrod Berry ($13,700) has had an incredible fantasy scoring year for the Lions after looking like he might drop out of the best 22 at times during 2023. Averaging just under 93 points he is a player that scores not only on the inside but racking up uncontested possession on the outside, which is where St Kilda conceded a lot of points. He should get into the chains with the backs as Brisbane rebound and he has a ceiling of 120+ in this game. Furthermore, we know that the Saints will use Marcus Windhager in the lockdown role, so being careful to avoid that Brisbane midfielder will be key and the most likely player to draw the tag for the Lions is Lachie Neale (big fade!).
Suggested Draftstars Lineup
Cheat Sheet
