I think the OP is referring to sandbagging (tanking), where managers deliberately lose in league play to fair better in associations.

I don't think its clear that sandbagging actually creates an advantage when it comes to association draws, since the draw seems to be based upon quality to some extent. So you get 1 overpowered team with 5 significantly weaker ones, so you're an underdog in the majority of the matchups...

Regardless, associations is a cool concept, but in its current format its extremely broken!