The Plus Four: Round 8

We’ve been thinking of a new regular blog post to go up every Monday morning (tonight though because we only thought of it this arvo), that will highlight some of the big issues of the DT round just gone. The big performers, the injury issues, potential trades, and a whole lot more will be in this ‘hopefully’ regular column.

STONE THE FLAMIN’ CROWS

This is some news just in, the Adelaide Crows have suspended Bernie Vince, Graham Johncock and Matthew Jaensch for a match after “breaching training and preparation standards”. This will hurt people who have already been let down by Vince over the first few weeks of the season, dropping over $60K so far this year. The other worry would be those who got in Jaensch last week and if this means he could be on the outer with the club. If you have Johncock, give yourself and uppercut – he is injured anyway.

HILLE-BURGER CLEARED

Roy was a gutted Dream Team coach yesterday. He first selected Mitch Clark at the start of the year, he sucked heaps for the first two rounds, then did what a whole heap of people did and that was downgrade him to the awesomely performing Mark Seaby. We won’t talk about what happened there, but now destROY has David Hille in that ruck spot. His ‘shirtfront’ on Brendan Goddard wasn’t pretty and most reports said that he was looking at 2-4 weeks for it – especially with his record (this was the third similar offence this year). Anyway, the good news is that be will be free to play next week as the charge was withdrawn. David Hille, Roy and anyone else who has him can count themselves very lucky!

The other tribunal worries are from Jarrad Waite who can accept a two match ban for a head high bump. Looks bad, he should take it! Shame, because he has shown a bit is and is a bit of value in the back or forward line. Daniel Jackson is looking at two weeks for a headbutt on DT TALK’s own Campbell Brown.

SOME GOOD LOOKING FRESH MEAT

We saw some fresh meat which looks pretty good to take off the shelf this week (or in some cases next). The best of these was Danny Hughes. The Melbourne forward ended up with a 74 (to go with his first score of 63). Get on if you’re looking at downgrading a forward bench player? Time to go Scott Gumbleton? Hughes looks pretty awesome and in my opinion his job security should be pretty good. Brad Sheppard in the backline pulled out a better game, but his higher price over Jeromey Webberley who scored a 60 and a 52 doesn’t seem worth the punt. If you have Ben Nason, a trade to Webberley looks like a winner this week to net you around $130K. Very handy. In the midfield, Tony Armstrong from the Crows showed that he has potential, pulling in 123 (after not playing since Rd 1 when he only had 36 points. Stay tuned for Chook’s Rooks later in the week.

TEAM SWAN GETS A WIN OVER TEAM ABLETT

This was a very funny moment of the weekend. The stress of seeing Gary Ablett on 33 points at half time after Dane Swan had an awesome 131 on Friday night. Team Ablett members were spitting chips and it ruined their weekend. They completely forgot about his 167 last week and that his lowest score this year was 120. Oh, he still came good with a 96. I’m sure most people have had captain scores worse than that in the past.

CHEAP KEEPERS JUST KEEP COMING

We have all said Michael Barlow will stay in our Dream Teams all year, but now there are a few more dudes who have stepped up that were cheap that we could almost count as keepers now. Beau Waters has shown enough to be classified as a keeper. He is doing heaps better than friggen Heath Shaw. Plenty of people were pumped with Matt Maguire on Saturday night with his 95. Whether he is a ‘bench keeper’ or slotted in there as your seventh defender, it’d be a big call to trade him.

MASSIVELY HIGH SCORING ROUND

Calvin tells me there was a record number of 100+ scores from players (well highest in about 2 years apparently). But there were some thumping scores from coaches too. Quite a few guys broke through the 2300 barrier. Including our good mates Walkie Talkie and Piercy (coach of the MANZACS). Nice work boys!

We all had pretty good weeks as you can see below. It seems as though you needed over 2150 or so to be on par for the week. Crazy.

Team name		Coach	Points last round	Avg. per round	Total Points	National Ranking
1	Calvinator	Calvin	2,198	2053.75	16,430	4,470
2	I’m Not Happy	Chopper	2,114	2043.88	16,351	6,052
3	Warne Dawgs	Warnie	2,210	2040.12	16,321	6,722
4	Merv Gray Autos	Chook	2,169	2038.38	16,307	7,080
5	destROY	Roy	2,245	2033.88	16,271	8,033

Well, that is the first installment of Plus Four. Chat it up in the comments section. Mull over the weekend and what is to come over the next week.