The Friday Scramble: Round 20

We Made It!!!!  Finals time is finally upon us and all that planning that we have done all year and building our team to be the best it can is finally going to pay dividends!!

So when I started thinking about the scrambling that will need to be done this week I thought… everyone has their team done and dusted and there won’t be much to do…. then nek minnit Swanny gets out on the cans and turns up a bit shady!

We all knew about this one with Swanny early in the week, but it appears none of us listened to Fantasy Freako’s tweets last week because we are now without Buddy Franklin for a 5th week!!!  If we had known this when he first went down we would have probably traded him out.   There have also been rumours that Paul Chapman didn’t board the plane to Perth!  Thankfully they have the Friday night game so we will know for sure if he is in or out.

Hopefully if you have been a reader of DTTalk all year you are in the top 8 and probably in the top 4 of your league and are now heading for glory in your league.  To make sure you get that glory there are a few things that we need to think about this week so here we go!

Swanny has a few quiet ones…

If we were back in the 80’s then whatSwannydid would be considered a bit soft given he actually was upright and at training!  But we aren’t back in the good old days and these days this is frowned upon even if you do average 39 touches a game!  So what do you do?  There are a few options.

Top 4 with 5 or more trades – In this case you can afford to trade him with 5+ trades left.  You can go to any other gun in the game really!  This will really help you get to a Prelim and you would still have 4 trades left for the last two rounds and could get Swanny back.

Top 4 with less than 5 trades  – Here you really need to have a look at your opponent.  If you think you can get the win with your bench cover (probably Gibbo, Treloar or Devon) then you would probably hold him.

Not top 4 and more than 2 trades – In this case you MUST win so you should trade him unless you are a complete Lock to win with your bench cover (i.e. you are 5th v 8th who just scraped into the top 8).

Not top 4 and 2 or less trades – In this case you have to look at the opposition but there is no point bowing out of the finals with trades in the bank!

This is going to be a tough call for everyone and everyone will have different circumstances.  One thing is for sure.  When he comes back in round 22 Swanny will be out to show everyone that he has redeemed himself and will be like a raging bull.  Also remember, he won’t lose any match fitness as he will be playing in the VFL for the two weeks (I feel for the youngster that has to play on him this week, get ready for some running!).

Is Gibbo… Is Good!

Sam Gibson from the Kangaroos has been a great story this year.  He is averaging 84 from his 8 games but if you remove the 17 he scored when Green vested in his second game his average jumps to 93.  Further to that he is averaging 109 in his last 3.  So this is making a lot of us think that we should be playing Gibbo in front of a few others!

This very question was asked of me by Justin (@merilvingien) on twitter.  But he wanted to know if he should be playing Gibbo in front of two premo’s who are going to cop tags from a couple of the best taggers in the comp!  Sam Mitchell is going to probably cop the Kane Cornes tag on Sunday and Scott Thompson is probably a chance to get the Ryan Crowley tag on Saturday (although this may go to Dangerfield).

When Hawthorn played Port in Round 11 I don’t recall whether Cornes did tag Mitchell, but Sammy only came up with 88 points.  Similarly when Adelaide played Freo in Round 10 Scotty Thompson only managed to scrape together 65 points!

So there is certainly some merit in playing Gibbo in front of both of those guys.

Captain Capers

Another question that I got was from Corey (@Coreeey9).  His question was “if my opponent will probably have X as captain, should I go X for captain too so that it cancels each other out?”

This is an interesting question.  It is always a bit of a gamble.  If you are struggling for points and think that you will need a point of difference to get the win then it might be worth the calculated gamble.  However, it might also be a lot safer to go with the same captain that you think they will go with.  For this week, you will find that with Swanny out that most of the competition will be going with Gary Ablett.

Make sure that you have a look at Calvin’s Captains to help you choose.

If you ask me, if you have Gaz, then I would be definitely picking him as my C this week.  It is a massive risk to have someone else, not too many others are better than a 50% chance to crack a 130+ each week, you are pretty much trying to catch lightning in a bottle.  I am sure that those that went Swanny last week wish they picked Gaz, it probably lost a few people their game.

This is a Final Boarding Call for Mr Chapman.. Please head immediately to Gate 3

Just a quick one, there were plenty of rumours heading around the Twitterverse on Thursday afternoon/evening that  Paul Chapman didn’t find his way onto the plane to head to Perth.  So given they are the Friday Night game, we will know whether or not he is playing before lockout.

Make sure you keep alert so that you find out what is happening so that you can adjust your team if necessary.

Things To Remember

• If you are in 5-8 there is no tomorrow!  Trade if you have to!! No point having trades left if you are out of the league!
• Listen out for late changes.  Make sure you are online late Friday night. 
• Unless you have great cover Back in your Premo’s.  You got them at a high price because you did your research.  Back it in!
• Remember that Fri Night game starts LATER.  It is 8:30 EST start since it is in Perth.  So teams won’t be out til 7pm EST