The Friday Scramble: Bye Round 1

Is it really Bye round 1? I feel like it has been a few weeks of bye rounds already. With guys like Crouch, Williams and Rocky all missing in recent weeks I really feel like I have been carrying too many premiums on the bench for ages. Anyway, it just gets worse from now for a few weeks. If nothing else these are the weeks where we must Scramble!!

Bye Round Carnage!!

Every Single Bloody Year this happens! We get to the bye rounds and without fail at least one if not more premiums that we have been dutifully upgrading our teams with will go down with an injury that will see them miss at least one if not all of the bye rounds.  I for one am sick and tired of having to deal with it! I can’t stand it much longer! If you are reaching for the delete my team button then I am sure that you won’t be alone.

Here are a few thoughts that I have had so far about what is going on and what players are causing us all of this concern.

Shannon Hurn – He is a guy that I have been targeting and had him in two of the three formats as he has been scoring really well. Then he goes and does a hammy in the very last game before the bye’s start! Thankfully he didn’t do it too badly and looks like he should be back after their round 13 bye. Based on that then there is no reason not to hold him in the limited trade forms. If you have him in AF then given he will be missing for two weeks then you can trade him out. But if you do that then you should look at a player that has the R14 bye. What you can do then is trade back to him after R13 assuming that he will be back again.

Lachie Whitfield – Wow. What a kick in the guts this injury was for owners that held him through his recent spell of two weeks. Now he did deliver a massive score first game back but we now see him missing until after their bye. To be honest I doubt that we will see him in Round 15 either. I suspect he will be out for at least 6 weeks with this one. I can’t see them taking any chances with him, the Giants do bat pretty deep and they will want him cherry ripe for finals. I would recommend that in all formats of the game he should be traded out. If you are worried about your bye structures then you can get a R14 bye player to match his profile, but this is also a chance to fix up your bye strategy if you look like you will be ok in R14.

Rory Sloane – Another hammy, but to make matters worse he went off early in the game. This means his BE has gone up and he will get very cheap soon enough. He has been named this week, but I am very skeptical on this one. Don’t be surprised if he is a late out. If he is a late out I suspect that he should be back after his bye round as he was only listed as a test, but as we have seen with Matt Crouch we can’t trust them! If you are worried about him then in AF once again I would say trade without hesitation and use the same plan as I mentioned with Hurn. In the limited trade forms I am actually open to trading him if he is a late out as his hammy looked much worse than Hurn.

Dayne Beams – This one is a slam dunk. Trade. He is gone for pretty much the rest of the fantasy season.

 

Bye Strategy

We have been talking about Bye Strategy for a  few weeks now and here we are at the start of them. Your first priority is to make sure that you have your 18 players available for this week. You need to have them all on the field and not on the bench (unless they have the E on them of course and then they come on field for a 0 just like they normally would).

But not just that, I always try and map out all of my trades for the entire bye period. I know that things will change and curveballs will be thrown but it is worth at least having a plan. This way you can work through situations when they arise rather than panic and patch holes.

This week your key is to fix up any premiums that are likely to miss the whole bye period first (see the guys above) but more importantly you want to be building a bank of cash for next week so you can go BANG and upgrade players to those guys that have come off of their bye. In the limited trade forms of the game you don’t have to use all three trades you have this week. Some coaches may choose to only use one! I will be using two in each of SC and RDT as I have premiums that will miss all of the byes that I need to fix and I want to use the other trade to make some money.

Finding rookies to downgrade to isn’t going to be the easiest thing in the world to do. So you may need to take them when you can get them. Not much you can do about this but you don’t want to be bringing in rookies that won’t play if you don’t have to. Ruck bench is the only spot I ever feel comfortable doing this in. As we get deeper into the season and we get guys missing for a rest (particularly concerned about the Cats players if they sew up a top 2 spot early) then you are going to need that bench cover for late outs (once again I am looking at you Geelong).

My first priority in trading is always to get rookies off of the field before sideswapping premiums (unless they are out for lengthy periods).

Selection Table

The next three weeks are critical when it comes to selection, we can’t afford to have any selection shocks as we struggle to field a team each week. But rest assured the coaches won’t look after us! Anyway, my thoughts on what is going on with selection.

Patrick Naish is a debuant for the Tigers. It is good for us to have a super cheap rookie this week. Pick him up in AF but not in RDT or SC.
Brandon Ellis is out which is going to hurt some coaches.
Gazza is back! But we knew he would be.
Liam Stocker is out injured…. Despite NOT appearing on the official injury list!  Our sport needs to get better than this!
Matt Crouch is finally back! Bloody hell that took long enough, but it is nice that he is back before the byes start thankfully.
Rory Sloane is still in which is handy for us. But don’t be surprised if he doesn’t run out and is a late out.
Gibbs has been dropped yet again! Trade if you still hold.
Zac Williams returns which we all thought would happen. Great to have him back for the byes.
Whifield is out as we know and as we talked about during the week it is time to go for him, we simply can’t hold him and I will be surprised if he isn’t out past his bye.
Hurn also out, but I think he will return in round 14. Hold if you can.
Marty Hore, May and Lever are all back in the team and have all been named on the field which is handy for us.

 

Things To Remember

• Players on byes won’t be locked out in RDT and SC until the start of the Monday game.
• We won’t know the final teams for the Monday teams until after AF is locked out.
• This is the week to build a bank ready to do some serious upgrading next week.
• Don’t bring in blokes this week that you aren’t keen on holding for a while. Anything can happen in byes.
• If your Captain is not one of your best 18 scorers the VC will NOT be doubled. The only time your VC is doubled is if your captain does not play.
• A player on the bench with an E will only be counted in your best 18 if one of your players on field doesn’t play.

 

 

Best of luck to everyone this week and for the next three weeks. Do your best and remember the aim is to come out of the bye rounds with a better team than the one that you went in with. If you can do that you will set yourself up for the rest of the season and hopefully you will also improve your ranking and get some league wins too.