The Thursday Scramble: Round 4

3 rounds down and we are starting to get some valuable data and we are starting to have to deal with some injuries and some adverse team selections after the round has started. It affects your on field decisions, emergency decisions and the all important captain decisions.

How hard do you chase the Captain Loophole?

With the way that the team announcements are now this is making the captain loophole much harder to negotiate. The other factor making this harder is that at this stage of the season we have the majority of our bench players playing. So a question that many coaches asked themselves this week (and I was one of them) is whether or not they should trade in a donut to take a great VC, risk taking someone later in the weekend and hope for a late out or just take the next best available captain option.

This is a huge risk reward scenario. Last week was a real test for all coaches that didn’t have an injured or suspended player on the bench. A heap of coaches had Grundy as Vice Captain and once he had his big score it was a case of how do I get this as my Captain score this week?

Should I trade in a donut?
Whenever I am asked about this, or faced with this option myself, the answer 99% of the time is No. The only time that I would consider bringing in a donut was if that was someone that was suspended or out just for a week and they were in your plans to bring in anyway. I.e. if you were to trade in Dangerfield this week at the end of the round because you had nothing else you needed to achieve and he was someone you wanted anyway, then yes, go for it. You are still using your trade to improve your team.
I know that some people this season have traded in guys that are no chance to play at all and I am not a fan of doing that at this early stage of the season. I think that is a move that is best used in the last two or three weeks of the year to get you a win in a knockout final. But wait I hear you say, don’t you always say start with a non playing R3 (when there are no rookie rucks playing). Yes, but that different, you aren’t using a trade on them.
The risk that I see is that you will get stuck with this player when you have other things go against you in subsequent weeks.

Should I wait until all teams have been named?
Usually this will be on the Saturday night and often before the Saturday night games have started. If you don’t have an obvious loophole option in the Friday/Saturday games then this is certainly a valid play. If I take last week as an example you could have waited and seen that Highmore was named out on the Friday night for the Sat games. This week there is a chance that one of the Hawthorn rookies won’t be named and they play on Sunday. This is the right play ONLY IF you have a viable C option playing after the teams are named. So you need to make sure that if you wait you have someone like a Max, Brodie, Macrae, Merrett etc playing on the Sunday that you can use.
For me though, this is the preferred option if you can do it.

With no obvious loophole option should I just take the best available captain option?
Certainly a valid plan too. This is what I did in Supercoach last weekend and it ended up costing me about 60 points. I had the VC on Grundy, and I thought that Macrae against North was the next best captain option in my side as I thought he would go bigger than Max. So I put the C on him on the Friday afternoon only to find a few hours later that Highmore was out and I could have used him. It is certainly a risk that you may need to take. The thing is that the longer the season goes on the more and more likely you are to have a non-playing player on your bench somewhere. Don’t be afraid to take the best available before you have all the teams, if you have done your research, or listened to the mad joke telling pirate Calvin, then go for it. However, if like last week your VC in Grundy goes huge it may be worth looking at all options you have.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that there are plenty of decisions and gambles that we take playing Fantasy Footy and you just need to sit down with a level head and make sure that you have all the knowledge you can at the time and look at all the options available to you before locking in your choice. And just be aware that there will always be weeks where you make the wrong choice and there will always be weeks where you make the right one.

There’s a New Tagger in Town

Just when we thought we had seen the last of the tagging pests off with an injury on Sunday when de Boer did his hammy (and don’t get me wrong he is a great player who not only nullifies he can find the footy too) we have confirmation on Monday that O’Connor from the Cats is not just a one hit wonder. We all knew he could do it but taking down both Lachie Neale and our own Pig Tom Mitchell in consecutive weeks confirms it. So just take all this into consideration when you are looking to bring in a premium and when you are assessing your captain options.  The Cats play the Demons this week, so look out Clayton Oliver, poor bloke, de Boer one week then O’Connor the next!

MidPricer or Rookie?

There has been a lot of talk this week of some of the forced trades that people have and whether they go to a mid pricer who is looking the goods or a rookie. I think it has been covered on a lot of podcasts but I thought I would throw my two cents to say that I am in favour of the rookie here, particularly in SC and RDT where you have limited trades. What you don’t want to do is buy into a midpricer where you know that you will need to make another trade to get to your final side. This is something that will slow down your upgrade cadence to your final team. In AF you can be a little looser with this as you have more trades but just remember you might get stuck with someone because you have too many other fires to put out and then not enough cash when you trade them out to do that upgrade.

Things to Remember

• Back to the new normal timeslots this week so no Monday game and only the one Friday game.
• Watch for role changes in some teams where key players have gone down, i.e. Gold Coast’s ruck situation
• Have multiple trade scenario’s ready for the carnage that is no doubt soon to hit us all!

Have a great weekend folks, it is the return of amateur footy this weekend here in Adelaide so get out and watch your local teams if you can and see some good games of footy, Go Towns!!  And just a reminder for those that read my little articles here and also something for those that are new. I can’t always get on to respond to your messages during the day due to work, however, I do read them either on the Thursday night or I try to read them during lunch. So if I don’t respond I apologise but it just isn’t always possible. But as always there are plenty of legends here that are always keen to help out with some advice and 9 times out of 10 I 100% agree with the advice that has been given.
Good luck and I will see you all next Thursday.