The Thursday Scramble: Round 6

More injuries, some huge scores and coaches are scrambling to put a team on the field. This is where the game starts to get interesting!

Rookie Resting

We are going to start seeing this more and more in the coming weeks. Some of these rookies have played 4 or 5 games and as a result they will start to be in line for a rest or even worse they could be named the injury sub. This is where your depth and your DPP setup will start to become most important. This is where you need to make sure that you have a few rookies that are going to play even if they won’t score well.

When you see that one of your rookies is out for the weekend’s matches make sure that you do read the context in which they are out. Is it just a rest, are they being managed or are they out for another reason? Has a star returned to the side? All these things need to be taken into account and that will help determine whether or not you keep them or look to trade them.

Often when a rookie that is struggling to generate money is rested they are heavily traded out. But as always, do your due diligence. Have a look at their BE and whether or not there is one poor score in their price cycle that is hurting it. If that is the case you may want to hold them as their cash generation may just be stalled and not finished.

However, if there is a rookie that is getting close to needing to be culled and they happen to get a rest then that is often the perfect time to do it. You could hold them for that week off and have them come back and maybe make you another $5k or so. Or you can downgrade them to a rookie on the bubble that is likely to make you somewhere in the order of $30k across those two weeks. Sometimes you need to cut these guys a little early in the interest of a bigger return elsewhere.

Of course there is the issue of having three guys on the one line that aren’t performing and they also are in line for resting. That is a recipe for disaster. If you are in that situation then you need to trade one of them out by either upgrading them or trading down to a rookie that has better job security.

Thursday Night’s Be Gone

What does no game tonight mean? You have to talk to the family? You have to walk the dog? No, the most important thing that it means is that before the first game of the round we will know teams for 6 games. So we will have far more information than we have had so far this season. Apparently this is going to be the case now for a few weeks. This is great for us particularly when you take the aforementioned Rookie Resting into account. At least now we will know before the first game starts.

This doesn’t mean that we lose the Captain Loophole like we had in the past. Given we still have the rolling lockout situation throughout the rest of the season it means that we can still enact the Captain Loophole and have two goes at it.

Just remember though, now that there is no Thursday game it means that there is a second game on a Saturday afternoon. This means that those of you that are working or are involved in local footy need to check on four teams during the day and not just the two. Don’t get caught out.

Is it time for Set and Forget

Now we already know that Flynn is back this week but the form of Mumford over the last two weeks has been outstanding and as was mentioned on a podcast this week Mumford is 2-0 and Flynn is 0-3. You have to wonder how long the Giants will persist with him.

More importantly how long do you persist with him? Is it time to go for Gawn and Grundy? This is the question that many players are asking themselves. There are a couple of schools of thought here and I hope to provide you with some insight.

Last season I was on the Naismith train and it derailed pretty quickly. From that point onwards I was literally scrambling to get a playing ruck that would actually score on the field. I went through Mr Worldwide and English just to name a couple. Why didn’t I go straight to Gawn you ask? Lack of funds. I think that if you don’t have a massive Warnechest at this point and you really want to get the big Demon in your side you are going to have to do one of a few things.

• Double downgrade this week and then pray for no other issues and use that cash to get to Gawn the following week.
• Wait until Flynn has maxed out in value and hope that you can do one downgrade to then upgrade Flynn to Gawn or Grundy.
• Wait until the byes when you get three trades in a week and use two to go down and one to go up to Gawn or Grundy (whichever you are missing).
• Wait and pray that he has one or two low scores in a row that see his price drop so that you can pick him up. This is what I did last year but that day never came!

As I have said before, certainly nothing wrong with using Flynn but there will come a point where he has maxed out and you need to be ready with some cash to upgrade him at that point. We have seen that after week one the big dogs have worked out their role with the new rules and they are scoring well. Hopefully Flynn comes back from his rest bigger and better, but I think we can all agree that he isn’t going to be there every week for the rest of the year and I know of a few coaches that had to rely on Treacy last week, you don’t want to have to do that more than once.

Things to Remember

• Just because it is a regular round structure we still get our teams a day before and it is still a rolling lockout.
• Keep an eye on your trade numbers in SC and RDT. Remember we only have 30 this year again.
• You need to be thinking about your upgrades and downgrades a week or two in advance now as we will have to pull the trigger on a few soon.
• Make sure you are reading match reports and listening to podcasts to get all the available info on the rookies before you bring one in or trade them out.

Have a great week everyone, I know that SC had some big scores this week but AF not so much. It can be a cruel game but just back in your research and put the best team out on the park that you can.  Cheers til next week.