The Thursday Scramble: Round 3

Did you hold your nerve last week? Did you trade out a premium that disappointed you from round 1? Did you bring in a rookie that dominated in round 1 but failed in round 2?  If you feel like you make the wrong decisions, don’t worry I am very sure you are not alone. Thankfully we get another go to try and make it all work again or to completely stuff our teams up!  Let’s Scramble!!

Fixture Alert

Not only do we have our now regular Thursday Night game tonight, but we also have Two games on Friday night!  For (what I think is) the first time in AFL history we have two games on the Friday night.  We have Melb v Ess starting at 7:20 AEDT but then, after years of campaigning, the Showdown is on a Fri night starting at 8:20 AEDT (not the best year for it given how badly both Port and Adelaide have started this year).

So we need to make sure we have our teams well set up this week to cover for these three games that happen prior to Saturday. What it does is it means that you have to be well planned for when final Sunday teams come out on Friday night as we will have 6 teams locked out by the end of Friday.

By having this extra game on Friday night we don’t have any games on Saturday until the Twilight fixture. This would have been to accomodate the AFLW Grand Final originally, obvioulsy Covid had something to say about that timing.

Sell Short and Buy Long?

To steal a bit of a phrase from the “Supercoach Investor” on the Herald Sun website, some people would be planning to sell an underperforming premium now to invest that capital on someone that is on the rise. Now one of the things that we have often said on this website is that we don’t trade our premiums. Never before have I heard so many coaches talking about downgrading premiums after the first couple of rounds of the season, guys like Gawn and Steele have been mentioned which is very rare. But if you want to be agressive with your trading and go for the car in AF or the $50k in SC this might be one of the types of move that you look at.

On the 500th Episode of the Traders Podcast (congrats guys) you would have heard Roy and Calvin talking about trading out Gawn to English so they can upgrade someone else in their team from a mid pricer to a premium. This is certianly a valid course of action. What you are doing is freeing up some of the cash that you have invested in Gawn which isn’t really producing and then investing that money into another player that is on a hot streak (although not sure I would say English is on a hot streak) so you are getting better return for your money. There are so many factors that you need to take into account. Who have they played? What were the conditions? Who was missing from their side?  All of these things need to be thought about so that you can make an informed decision.

One of the keys to successfully implementing this strategy is that you need to be sure of your decision. You need to be sure that the player you are trading out is showing a trend of dropping in value and you are sure that their role has changed such that they won’t come back and score as expected. Remember, in the case of Max for example, you would be trading out someone that those who didn’t start with him would be looking to trade into when his price drops. So this means you may end up using two or three trades to get him out, use the cash elsewhere, then try and raise funds through a trade and then trade him back in when he does pick up his scoring (I hope he increases it anyway as I too am an owner).

The one thing you need to do here is make sure you aren’t chasing last week’s points. The points that have (or haven’t) been scored in the first two weeks are done and gone, they aren’t coming back. So you need to base your decision on “What will the player score for the remainder of the season”. If you can objectively look at it and say yes then go for it.  Popular trades at the moment are Whitfield to Hewett and Gawn to English.  Will Hewett outscore Whitfield for the rest of the year?  Maybe, but we haven’t seen him play in a midfield with all of Cripps, Walsh and Cerra (each week one has been out).  Will English outscore Gawn for the rest of the year (particularly if Stef Martin comes back in)? I would say Doubtful.  But we just don’t know what will happen so if you truly believe that is the right move then go for it.

Trading Changes – Supercoach

Last week I made reference to a change in trading in Supercoach. We all know about the trade boost now and that this is used to get 3 trades in a week if you want them.  The other change was as follows…

Let’s say the player you want to trade out plays on the Thursday and the one you want to bring in plays on the Sunday.  You can make this trade and normally it would be locked. However now you can change the player you have traded in later in the round even when the player you have traded out is locked.  This would be in the event that your player gets Covid on the Saturday and is then a late out for the Sunday.  So Player A out and Player B in.  Then on Sunday you change Player B to Player C and the trade is still valid.

We have always actually been able to do this but it just required a bit of fancy trade work, however now the people at HS have made it a feature and a bit easier and advertised the fact.

Things To Remember

• I will stress again.  There are TWO games on Friday night starting 1 hour apart.
• Be strategic with your trades don’t just do the popular thing. Maximise your team’s future scoring potential.
• Two weeks don’t make a season but they do start to give us an idea.  Trust your eye when watching games as to the players role.

Best of luck folks.  If your leage hadn’t started yet it would start this weekend (I think all default RDT and SC leagues start this week) so hopefully you can come away from the weekend with a swag of W’s.

Next week I will look to answer a few questions so I will put a post up on Twitter to see what you are all after!  Good luck and see you next Thursday.