Calvin’s Captains – Rd. 19

Now, you know I am not one to brag… but just glance over my top 5 from last week before we roll on here…

Dane Swan – 159
Dayne Beams – 113
Gary Ablett – 152
Scot Pendlebury – 114
Matthew Boyd – 94

Premiums Vs Mega Premiums

Ok… just quickly, everyone always says to me – “What about Pavlich as captain? Or what about Cotchin or Zorko?” The list goes on and on. But what I want to point out to you here is this, as good as these players are and yes they are guns… let’s look at what Cotchin does, for example, compared to the mega premium players we have such as Ablett and Swan. You’ll see his numbers just don’t match these guys. Yeah, he’s young and is still a jet, but in DT you don’t get extra points for that.

Scores 120+ in 2012 … Swan 53%, Ablett 53%, Cotchin 25%
Scores 140+ in 2012 … Swan 40%, Ablett 40%, Cotchin 6%
Score under 100+… Swan 7%, Ablett 13%, Cotchin 31%

Freaky actually how similar Swan and Ablett’s numbers are, certainly surprised me. But I think you get my point, these guys just can’t match the mega premos so let’s move on and look at some of the BIG options for this week.

In a Word…

Dayne Beams – has scored 147 & 137 in his last 2 at the MCG averaging 132 in his last 3 this year. The kid is firing and had 113 and 75 on the Saints last year.
Scott Pendlebury – previous scores of 142 and 117 at the MCG in his last 2 and is averaging 124 in his last 3 this year. Had 107 and 129 on the Saints last year avoiding the CJT both times.
Matthew Boyd – form has been poor with 94 and 82 in his last 2 games this year but will be way better this week. He has already had 162 on the Roos this year and should go BANG!
Jobe Watson – Hasn’t played the Crows since 2010 and only averages 78 on them in his last 3 but they are old numbers. Over at AAMI this week, where he had 124 on the Power earlier this year.

Running Hot

After previous scores of 152 (42d), 143 and 128 it’s very safe to say that Gary Ablett is on fire averaging 141 in his last 3 this year. He has only played at the MCG once this year and if you remember… it was against Collingwood and he had a massive 190pts. This week he meets the Demons, a team who held him to just 96 last year thanks to a hard tag from Bartram. Melbourne will either use Magner, Bail or most likely McKenzie on him this week who held Wells (79) last week as Swallow (160), Gibson (133) and Harvey (110) ran a muck. This isn’t worrying me one bit this week and I’m expecting something big from the little master again.

The hottest player in the competition right now is Dane Swan who has averaged 147 in his last 3 games this year with 159 and 165 as my #1 pick in the last 2 weeks. He plays the Saints at the MCG this week where he has a low of 105 there in his last 6. Last year when he played St Kilda he had scores of 137 and 83… and prior to that he has had scores of 141, 138 and 112. Umm, wait a minute – 83? I can tell you that day he had just 19d and was tagged by Dempster. This was when Swanny was going through a horror patch and subsequently was shipped off to Arizona the following week. Now, he’s obviously not playing like that anymore! The 137 he had last year was with the tag of Clinton Jones and although he may go to Swan again… he may run with one of the other guns like Pendles, Beams, Steele or even Daisy Thomas who he actually did run with in the game Swan had Dempster. Either way, he’s had 159 and 165 in his last 2 games for me as my #1 and I will not turn my back on him this week at the MCG!