The Thursday Scramble: Round 3

How good was it to have some Footy back to watch on the weekend? I wish I could say the same for some of my player’s fantasy scores! I know that in one form of the game I managed to dodge every high score and my ‘premiums’ were the ones that underperformed. Perhaps I should start listening to Calvin a bit more after his score this week.

Anyway, at least now we have a bit of current form to go by as we start to Scramble our way to lockout for Round 3.

Selection Table

Honestly wasn’t planning on having this section this week, thought I would have nothing to talk about then bang! Dusty OUT! As if things couldn’t get any harder this year. 60% of AFL Fantasy teams now have a decision to make. Do we trust our guys on the bench or do we need to trade him out. This is going to be a big decision, particularly as we don’t have the most reliable bench players at the moment. Ideally we would hold him but if you need to make some cash from a downgrade then it may not be the worst move you could make. It could help you fix up some other holes in your side.

Chasing Scores

This week the key thing we all saw was that chasing scores can be very dangerous. We saw a few examples where someone that had a big score in round one struggled to replicate that in round 2. We saw Viney go from 132 down to 62 this week and Bewley had an 89 then this week a 52. Another that caused some issues was Sam Jacobs who went 80 then 55. This was a particularly sore point for many coaches as he was a popular trade in target for many coaches as a replacement for Naismith who now looks to be out for at least another week.

On the flip side of this we saw Gawn as a popular trade out target after his ‘quiet’ (by his standards) game against West Coast where he scored a 73 but then he came out with a 123 (albeit against Pittonet). He wasn’t the only one that bounced back this week either, there were a few that did this.

The lesson that we need to learn here is (and to be fair it isn’t a new lesson) that we shouldn’t chase scores and we also shouldn’t jump off a player after one poor score. I know that some of this goes against what I mentioned last week where I said we need to be aggressive in our trading and chase the money. But while chasing the money we need to be strategic about it. You need to make sure you aren’t sacrificing too much in terms of points and that the form you are chasing is going to be consistent.

#AskDunny

As always I will try and answer some of your questions each week. Normally I will look at the strategy side of things rather than this player v this player, with those questions I will still bring it back to strategy where I can.

Do i prioritise getting dud rookies like cavarra off the field or fix up premo duds like brodie smith

— Julian Franze (@jfranze7) June 16, 2020

This is the issue that will be facing a lot of coaches this week. First and foremost you need to get playing players on the field so if you do have Cavarra on the field (who is now out for a few weeks after hand surgery) then your priority is to get rid of him for whoever you can. My view is to always get rid of the dud rookies. We need to move them on first because with a ‘dud’ premium there is more of a chance that they will pull out a decent score of around 50-60 whereas a dud premium is more likely to get you a score of 15-35.

So if you have no dud rookies on the field then you can fix up people like Brodie Smith but always rookies first.

With the shortened season, is it better to chase value by dropping Whitfield and Macrae or fixing rookies??

— Anthony Ellul (@anthonyellul) June 16, 2020

So this question is slightly different to the above whereas here we are dropping some premiums to bring in some more value players and fix up some rookies. I think this is a reasonable strategy to take. If you are going to use the falling premium to bring in a value mid pricer and use the excess cash to upgrade a rookie then it is going to help your side in the long run. But you need to be careful here as the downgrade may come back to bite you like it did for those that traded out Gawn last week.

I did have another couple of questions that I was going to answer but I couldn’t get them to paste into here and then I lost them.  But in answer to Jake (I think) when I work out how to polish the turd that is my team I will certainly let you know!  Hopefully I can get the technology working for me next week and I can answer a few more.

What did we learn from Round 2?

Last week I talked about how it is a different game this year and we need to look at how the shortened quarters will impact players. I’m not convinced we have enough of a sample size yet but I am sure we will have in the next few games. The aggressive trading will still need to be part of our plan but we still need to remain calm and measured in our trades. For example I have heard a lot of people saying that players like Butters and Rozee should be targeted because of their scoring so far. However, we all know that the Power have had two fairly comfortable wins where the scoring is not indicative of what we are likely to see for the remainder of the season. So before you rush to get them in just beware.

The other thing we saw in round 2 is that Bevo is up to his old tricks again. Macrae spent a fair amount of time out on the wing which once again hurt his scoring. What this did do is allow Dunkley to rack up the points. With the way that the Dogs are playing at the moment I would be picking up their guys with a great deal of caution. Another thing we saw was Harley Bennell return to the AFL which is fantastic and we are all really happy for him. His scoring wasn’t massive and I have heard people say we shouldn’t trade him in because of low time on ground. I am looking at this in the opposite direction, his scoring wasn’t too bad for his price and he only played 50% time on ground. Imagine what he will do when he gets released more and more each week. As his time on the field increases so will his points. I think he is a must have at the moment just given his experience and his ability to rise in price quickly from his low base.

As always rookies will be inconsistent. But if you don’t have Matt Rowell then you should make sure you get him in!

Things To Remember

• Get your Hawks and Tigers players set before the bounce tonight as they will be locked.
• Trades are sticky on SC and RDT as of the first bounce tonight, that means no reversing!
• Be careful chasing last week’s points. It rarely works.
• Check out Calvin’s Captains, I shouldn’t need to tell you this but Follow the Pirate!

Thanks for reading everyone, best of luck for round 3. This season started out as one of the most difficult and it is certainly living up to that standard. I am very concerned as to what the teams announcements will be tonight but with Dusty out I can’t imagine that the news will get any better.