Late-season heroes
Ask anyone who their favourite Mortal Kombat character is and the answer is sure to be one of the fighters from the first game in the series: ninja heroes Sub-Zero or Scorpion, probably, or maybe they were a Liu Kang man. Some of my mates were even on the Raiden bandwagon, taking him in to a battle to the death despite the fact that he wore a wok on his head. Street Fighter is similar, with the coolest characters featuring in SF1 (Ryu and Ken) and 2 (Blanka, Guile, Zangief and Chun-Li, for example). It’s a rare occasion, then, when a character who debuts late in a series finds popularity among the fans, but it does happen. Mortal Kombat’s mustard-coloured cybernetic ninja Cyrax is one such example. The dread-locked cyborg who dropped bombs from his guts became one of the stars of Mortal Kombat 3 with his Slice ‘n’ Dice fatality and black blood.
What’s this got to do with AFL Dream Team? Read more to find out.
North Melbourne rookie Liam Anthony is the same as Cyrax, except for the bombs and black blood. We’ve had to wait a long time for the Kangaroos midfielder – in the meantime falling for “original” rookies like Dan Rich and the now non-selectable character Jack Ziebell – but Anthony is sure to win the hearts of the fantasy faithful if he keeps pulling out scores like his 94 on debut, which included a 66-point second-half finishing move.
Cheers to our mate Stu for the Cyrax angle. We were talking with Calvin and Roy earlier tonight and, somehow, Mortal Kombat came up. I think Calvin wants to perform a fatality on Gary Ablett or something.
Anyway, more on Anthony in the one-gamer category later, but first to our original roster of characters in the three-or-more games bracket.
Three-or-more gamers
While Anthony gets to be linked with someone cool like Cyrax, Fremantle defenders Nic Suban and Stephen Hill are more like Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade – crap. To be fair, Hill has shown glimpses of decent DT form, bagging a century in round six along with a few 70s, but neither he nor Suban has made more than $100k on their starting price, which is pretty slack considering there are eight others who’ve soared at least $150k each. You might argue that they’re in your team as cinnamon (cover for doughnuts) and their price is therefore irrelevant, but if that’s the case, I’m sick of blokes coming off the bench and scraping together 30 measly points (I’m looking at you, Alex Rance). More like “sinner men” than “cinnamon”, I say.
At this stage of the season, a lot of these rookies have now reached their peak. Rich dropped a little last week and has a breakeven of 85, which is 8 points above his season average. Mr and Mrs Whitecross, your son Brendan has finally hit his ceiling (BE of 97), so it’s now time for you and the three other people who have him in their DTs to sell. Patrick Dangerfield, Taylor Walker, Angus Graham, Suban, Liam Picken, Jesse White and Jamie Bennell are all in the red zone (BE higher than average), while Richmond pair Rance and Robin Nahas along with Brisbane’s Sam Sheldon aren’t far off. Perhaps we’ll call that the pink zone. Maligned Melbourne forward Jack Watts is also in the red zone after his first price rise… oh, hang on, price drop. He has been seriously bad at DT thus far. His coach Dean Bailey should consider giving his number-1 pick four weeks on the sidelines. It worked for Dayne Beams and Jason Davenport, who spent the last month on the sidelines and returned with the top rookie scores of round 13. Beams bagged 102 and Davenport dobbed 95.
Two gamers
It’s pretty slim pickings in the two-game bracket again, with big prices, low scores or a combination of both making these blokes about as attractive as a threesome with Susan and Tim Boyle. If you’re desperate, like ugly-pop-idol-slash-ungainly-Hawks-forward-desperate, here’re the vitals:
Danny Meyer (Port) $75,300 ctr – 71, 41 (BE -54)
Liam Jurrah (Melb) $126,600 fwd – 65, 51 (BE -19)
Cruize Garlett (NM) $75,300 ctr – 26, 47 (BE -15)
Nick Naitanui (WC) $146,600 ruc – 42, 60 (BE 10)
Tyrone Vickery (Rich) $122,600 ruc/fwd – 43, 27 (BE 24)
One gamers
More than 14,000 owners stuck with popular pre-season signing Liam Anthony throughout his protracted injury. The 94 points would’ve been a sweet if not belated reward for their patience. Interestingly, even more coaches have Fremantle forward Hayden Ballantyne in their side. He’s highly touted, but didn’t convert those big wraps into a big score, getting just 26 on debut. Admittedly, that was against Geelong, which is probably the excuse his teammate and fellow first-gamer Zac Clarke (ruck) is using too. He made 27. Elsewhere, Richmond blooded another rookie in Jarrod Silvester, who snagged 68 points.
Apologies for the lateness of the Rooks his week. It’s been loco busy. Happy trading… ha, ha, like you’ve got any left!
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Freo played Collingwood, not Geelong. No excuses!
haha,chook probably didnt even take notice of the game, who would, its fremantle!
Hoping Silvester puts in another good week. Would love to downgrade in the backline and free up some cash.
Also, thank you Daniel Rich. You’ll be leaving me this week, but you did great for my side.
Damn, of course they played Collingwood. That was one I did see on the weekend. I think I pictured Freo getting smashed and whenever someone gets smashed I default to the Cats doing the smashing. Cheers, anonymous.
@ Big E
Yeah, I didn’t see the Richmond game so I’m not sure what type of player Silvester is yet, but the stats were pretty nice. He could be a popular downgrade target next week if Clancee Pearce doesn’t get back in for Freo.
Silverster plays as KPP, was on Kosi last week
pffft Reptile would have been a much better analogy, or Fei Long from Street Fighter.
i want to unload zieball but figure i might as well wait for a half decent option (since austin wont be playing) but where is it going to come from? hopefully ballantyne kills it this week
You made me laugh with this, Chook. Good work.
Mr and Mrs Whitecross, your son Brendan has finally hit his ceiling (BE of 97), so it’s now time for you and the three other people who have him in their DTs to sell.
I’m so dirty on myself for not picking whitecross. he was always hawthorn’s most likely rookie, but I got sucked into thinking my team would be too strong this year for rookie’s to get regular games. How wrong I was.
Kerr and Rich are like a reverse Dhalsim with their stumpy t-rex like arms.
I always thought there was something slightly h0mo about Zangief’s bear-hug move, all that grunting was a little too erotic for my taste. Plus he had the throw where you jump behind your opponent then grab them…
Lot of h0mosexual subtext in streetfighter, that’s for sure.
Bowden would definitely be Blanka I reckon, with his defensive electric field… Leading to a cheap and annoying contribution to the game.
Surely Fletcher would be Dhalsim with those stretchy arms…
Now I’m just trying to think of an analogy for E. Honda and his ‘100-hand slap’…
@ discommute
Funny you say that. Fei-Long is far and away my favourite SF character, but I talked myself out of using him as the analogy. I even downloaded a little gif of him like the Cyrax one above. The Rekkaken is miles better than Hadouken.
E.Honda could have been Lance Whitnall….limited movement…both fat…
Hey all,
Looking for a downgrade option for my backline. Who out of Pearce or Silvester would play more games for the rest of the year? I’m looking for some cinnamon.
@Smergen, I reckon Buddy can be E.Honda because he’s fat, or Barry Hall due to hitting everyone
Barry Hall gotta equal Sagat for the looks, or Balrog for his penchant for punching. Maybe pre-beard/hair Kano in MK.
@ Malovan
Both Richmond and Freo are going to play kids from here on in, though it’s tough to say who’s got the most competition for a spot. If Pearce is healthy again and named this arvo, I’d get him. If not, you could wait a week for the picture to become clearer. Unless you need the cinnamon this week.
I’m going to get anthony this week in part of a double trade to get Goddard.
Goddard’s BE is 65 or something like that so i’m keen to get him this week.
Worth the wait. Funny as! love the new term cinnamon. Will catch on.
Surely Bateman is Blanka… before the haircut, without the biting.
@Malovan
I’m doing the same, thinking Silvester but see how he goes this weekend.
Is Liam Jurrah an OK swap for Ben Warren as my last pick emergency? I guess a few hours will tell if he is playing round 14, but what do some of your guys think about his chances of playing for the rest of the year.
now i think about it, reptile really would have been perfect for anthony, since he was included it the first mortal kombat – but you couldn’t play him
ive got 11 trades left
@ discomute
After ditching the Fei-Long idea, my next Anthony analogy was with Noob Saibot as he was also around at the start (although in a different guise), but it all got a bit messy. Our ideas are scarily similar. Maybe I can give you a call before next week’s post and throw around a few ideas?
@HB
I am just about to do the same trade, Warren out and Jurrah in. Not sure what his chances are, not many other options
I was brought up in the Tekken era … Eddy Gordo all the way!
E.Honda = Stuart Dew
Looks like they both have just eaten a whole sheep!
So should I get Ballantyne (twineball) or Liam Jurrah as a downgrade swap for Ben Warren. They will need to play this week until I upgrade Walker next week, then be decent bench cover for the rest of the year. Twineball frees up an extra $50k so is Jurrah worth the cash?
‘twineball’ could be interesting. Maybe he’ll have a better game this week. No reason why he can’t pull a decent one. I mean it works both ways. Look at Muston – two huge games to start with, then 3 shockers, now he’s gone. Maybe the Hawks have had enough of him for the season? Anyway, Balla is starting, so we’ll see. My Warren to Yurrah trade is done anyway.
haha yeah Noob Saibot would have been a good one too! but can see how messy the post might have become. my email is discomute@hotmail.com feel free to drop me a line.
For the record, I am all about Reptile and Vega – both viewable but unselectable in the originals. Picking up Anthony this week too, what can I say, old habits are hard to break.
Ballentyne will take a few weeks to get up to speed. Freo have been so desperate for a small forward that they rushed him into the team after injury even though he had never played at afl level. He’ll take a week or 2 to get up to match fitness, but he should def improve on last week.
at this point of the season i am not concerned about the points ballentyne would get, but his job security. he could get 20 a game for the whole season, and hopefully it would never be used in my total, and if it did better than 0, and i wont have enough trades to capitalise on his value