DT Dick of the Week Round 9

Hello again Fantesticals, I hope you had a better week on the scoring than I did, and judging by my ranking this week, you all did.  Some very interesting performers again on the weekend with injuries striking early and late in games, rookies doing wonders and others looking woeful and we finally had a week where a 150 was a standout score rather than just one of many.

The first positive pronging this week goes to young Jacob van Rooyen.  Not only has he provided me with significant mirth this year listening to the many verbally challenged mediots and commentators mangle his name, but the kid sat in the middle of a storm this week, got freed to play and showed some decent mettle by playing well.  Good signs have been many this season for young JvR and his game on the weekend was a big one.  It even had Fantasy implications as he handed remaining owners with a decent 60 to kick off a little cash-gen which is awfully hard to find at the moment.

Speaking of JvR and awful, sending a DoW nomination to the MRO/Tribunal/Appeal Panel triumvirate is probably well overdue.  I have a few people here at my work who I often look at and think they’d be out of their depth on a carpark puddle.  What on EARTH must those who wander past Michael Christian in at AFL House think about that dude and his empty bouffant?  I mean it must give someone a HUGE lift when they cock something up in there to look over at Michael’s cubicle and just know that there’s pretty much no mistake you can make that’ll get you fired.  How good must that feel?  I thought the sports media, in particular AFL media, was the only place someone could be demonstrably bad at what they do, continue to be bad and still keep the gig.  Christian is proving that notion wrong.

The JvR thing this week was not even the only example of complete buffoonery in that part of the AFL industry.  If you ever needed further proof that jumpers worn by players appearing and money on the lawyers engaged to defend them had a direct impact on suspensions and citings then young Junior Rioli’s case was the last evidence you’ll need.  It wasn’t that long ago that Junior ploughed his ample but boney arse and shoulder right in to Matty Rowell’s red face, concussed him and yet Junior got off.  He got off despite the incident being centre of screen on a standalone game and it was covered by about 30 different camera angles.  You could see multiple slow motion snippets of Matty’s face going in to Junior’s body, getting rearranged like a 3yr old’s Mr Potato Head (just oranger) and coming out the other side with everything in a different spot.  Meanwhile the ball was nowhere.  This week, Junior goes up to the same guys but this time in a the teal, white and blue as opposed to the blue and yellow.  This time he obviously had Adelaide’s version of Lionel Hutz as his QC as opposed to the Harvey Spectre the Eagles use because this time Junior walks away with 2 weeks instead of none.  This despite there being only grainy cut away footage which made the Kennedy assassination look like Avatar Way of the Water.  Credit to the Eagles for being able to regularly pull that stuff off but the rest of the league needs to get the dude they use on speed dial.  It’s also pretty clear that if you want to get a rest for a few weeks, make sure you concuss a Ginger.  And don’t get me started on 1 weeks versus 2 weeks for the same tackles that seems to happen each week.

On field we had some much more positive gear this weekend.  Little and angry Errol Gulden pounded out the sedon of his back to back 150 this week and is hotter than dog crap on a BBQ right now.  He’s one of those guys that proves that CBA’s can be an over rated stat if not considered wisely.  To some guys they’re even a hindrance to performance, just ask Jack Crisp.  Some guys like Zac Merrett, Will Setterfield. Tom Mitchell etc need those CBA’s to excite us with their scoring.  Errol doesn’t need a C, B or an A and just likes points, lots and lots of points.

He can gettem kickin,

He can gettem tacklin,

He can gettem runnin around,

Matter of fact, he scored again just now.

 

It has been a masterful fortnight for Erry G and here’s hoping there’s many more to come, he’s so much fun to watch.  He’s primed for a good run and could easily be the next Pig if he can keep it up over a season or 2 this year and next.

Unlike the previous couple of weeks, Errol was our only “buck and a half boy” this week but another young gun who also has previously flashed Pig potential made a close run at the 150 with Matty Rowell banging out a massive 142.  Great week from the Gun from the Suns.  He put in an inspired performance at Optus and was clearly pushed along but an Eagle young gun too.  The recently ditched Rueben “Sanger” Ginbey also plonked on a great effort for a rookie with a top score of 96.  Amazingly he got there with only 4 kicks!  That doesn’t give good vibes about future scoring but for right now owners of Sanger are very happy.  He laid a very unlazy 16 tackles to pump his score up massively.  It was that great work that pushed Ginger Meggs to his great heights as he was not going to be outdone by the Eagles new toy and laid a fantastic 17 himself to go along with 29 possessions.  Imagine if Matty didn’t hate marking the ball!

From this game I want to pause to mention and reward the great work one of the players out there has done for many of us Fantasy coaches this year.  He’s one of a few blokes blokes who is contributing points to a massive number of teams each and every week and he’s doing it without even getting picked in those teams.  Bailey Williams does a great service each week by playing his ruck role to such great effect that it’s an almost guaranteed Bradman for any ruck in the other jumper.  Bailey has allowed a whopping 106ppg against him this year and for that we should all be very grateful.  He’s like a ruck points ATM that just keeps dishing out cash even with no PIN number.  Not far behind is Matty Flynn who also just keeps handing out points to oppo rucks like they’re drinks at Steven May’s birthday party and Matty wants to see a fight.  He’s pumped out a ripping 104ppg against in his time there which is just as generous to his ruck opponent.  Matty even managed to make Mason Cox look like Dean Cox for a week on the weekend as Mase leveraged his 60 Minutes fame in the US to 128 amazing points.  That’s normally a months work for the American Pie!

As I put this together I wondered what would happen if they played each other?  Would the points just keep clicking over and over or would one of these generous souls start to grab some points instead of just handing them out?  Then I remembered they HAD played against each other!  I can honestly tell you I’ve never been more interested in a stats line comparison in my LIFE.  In round 2, the last time the Eagles won a game, it was against GWS.  The Williams v Flynn Points Bonanza did not go as I’d expected.  Matty went full lockdown in this week but not his mate Bailey who kept his generosity on full flow.  B-Dub had a very low 51 but he made sure Flynny went bazinga!  Outside this game Flynny has topped out at 85, not in this one though.  In a losing effort, Flynny managed to pile up 111 points.  Williams must have been running around and giving Flynny the pill or just running slowly at Flyyny every time BW got the ball so Matt could lay a tackle.  Bailey is a wonderful man and we should all thank him for his work.

In recent times Port have joined the ruck point giveaway party with the Finlayson/Teakle Ruck ATM but there are extenuating circumstances there so I left them out a bit.  However giving the big Brontosaurus Ruck Dinosaur in Toddy Goldstein 128 smackers is brilliant work.  That’s after letting Ro Marshall lay you down and tickle your bellies for his 159 in Rd 7.  That’s almost as astonishing as Flynny allowing the inanimate carbon ruck rod that is Sam Draper to score 103 a few rounds ago.  So it’s a big “Bless all your cotton socks” to Bailey W and Flynny, your work is not going unnoticed.  Keep it up Fineakle and you boys will be lavished with similar praise very soon.

Some other positive prongs should go out to Bailey Humphrey who has rapidly made us forget his donut from a few weeks back with his great run of recent rookie form topping up with a 94 on the weekend.  Another rookie to do his business really well this weekend was The Natural in Willy Ashcroft who fed his coaches (which is all of us) a very tasty 109.  Of the more experienced dudes collecting points, Timmy Taranto (129) kept his tonne run alive with a beauty while Sam Walsh (123), Liam Duggan (113), Sam Docherty (112), Sean Darcy (115) and Titch Mitch (120) all gave their coaches reason to smile and differing levels of surprise and delight at their scores.

The last positive prong this week goes to Clarrie Oliver (126).  I was listening to a non-Fantasy AFL pod a couple of weeks ago (sorry, forgot which one) and heard an amazing stat about this Superstar.  Oliver had at that stage collected his 53^rd game in a row with a minimum of 5 clearances.  53!  That number might not mean much to you but the next best streak at the moment is 8.  I mean holy shit that is some impressive work.  To be that consistent and that much better than a very good field amazed me.  Bulk credit to Clarry for that and what a joy he is for his Fantasy coaches too.

OK, enough of the back pats, its time to get to DoW business.  There was a good field again this week and a fight to find the clear winner.  Perennially mentioned as a Dick this season has been Andy McGrath who is not the only top end pick to make everyone but Kevin Sheedy wonder what Adrian Dodoro actually does for a living.  Macca gave us another 69 and it you haven’t ditched this poor bloke I’d suggest strongly you do, it’s made my weekly phone watch much more enjoyable.  Much more surprising to be mentioned here is Zac Merrett who has looked like he’s ready to go bang for a while now but has instead still just fizzed.  An 83 on the weekend is not horrible but when you look just below him and see Brendan Zerk-Thatcher (80) almost outscore him you wonder what Zac’s up too.  Also in this game Josh Dunkley obviously thought he’d done enough last week and slept walked through this one for a maddening 88.  You’re only as good as your last game so Dunks is currently back to mildly disappointing after being best ever last week, it’s a cruel world.

I feel like Timmy English rates a mention this week.  92 is far from bad but we’ve become so used to big 100’s from Timmy this one stood out.  It’s by no means DoW worthy but it was a shock.  Just as shocking was Patty Cripps backing up his Dick of the Week with yet another performance worthy of the award.  He’s avoided a double dicking by only by a bees…yep.  73 is yet another crap score from Patty when we were all expecting a big rebound from him.  If you grabbed him (like me) this pick is now a definite mistake.  Staying at the Blues, a decent chunk of people bought in Adam Cerra this week after his recent hot as hell form.  They were vastly disappointed by his return for them as he gave about 50% of what he had been giving.  Seems he and Matt Kennedy can’t score well together and may hate each other too.  There’s a bit of that gong around.  What was clear is that Adam and Sammy Walsh love each other, but adding Kennedy to the mix might ruin that for Cherry Bomb.

The Hawks v Melbourne game was meant to give us an absolute shedload of points but instead it gave us the most number of genuinely Dick worthy performances.  Will Day (77) and Dylan Moore (64) were truly horrid.  Moore was worse but probably has more excuse that Day seeing the little D-Bag spend bulk time up front straining to see the ball as it spends all it’s time amongst his backline mates.  Day wasn’t a disaster but was well down.  Also down (AGAIN) was Big Brodie Grundy.  We all knew his ruck pig days were gone now he’s sharing the job with another star in Maxy Gawn but his most recent form is a real crap show for his owners.  59 points doesn’t cut it in any format.

The top 3 though were a level above, or below, depending on how you rank things.  The previous mentions all hurt their coaches to differing degrees but this next group really worked us over.  Firstly, a combined effort of Dick-ish Fantasy behaviour.  It would take a hell of an effort for a rookie to win a weekly DoW dong but a couple came close this week and, as a couple they get a mention here.  Kade Chandler (41) and Alex Cincotta (22) were on many fields this week and handled that responsibility as well as Damien Hardwick handles criticism.  Cincotta has been very reliable recently but he’s now got all of us looking at him like a carrot stick on a plate of cakes.  Similarly, Chandler made us all love him with a tonne a few weeks ago but his popularity dropped quicker than a bowling ball thrown down a mine shat the last 2 weeks as he has given us 2 absolute stinkers.  Rookies or not you can’t follow up good work with such garbage and skate through the DoW noms without a mention.

I’m grouping the next 2 up as well because they hurt owners for similar reasons so get similar treatment.  Jack Steele (75) has been a darling of the trade-n list each week for a while now and has done little but break the hearts of those who got him in.  I’d previously thought he just hated Brad Crouch, and maybe he does, but this week he got a knee knock and was taken off after sputtering along to a frustrating 75.  This weekly wrap of the Dicks has the potential to be unfair on those getting nominated as they will sometimes be crowd favourites or sometimes get injured which leads to the nomming.  This is one of those times but my worry is that Jacky wasn’t doing that great recently without a knock on his knee so I want to see the vision and make sure it wasn’t Crouchy who bashed him.  This needs more investigation.  On a similar front, but much more damaging to his coaches, was Cal Mills and his 3 points before injuring his calf.  What a kick in the gonads that was for coaches, especially if you swallowed that load of crap and then had Jack clown you as well later on.  Most annoying to at least one of his coaches (watching along with me at my place) was that Mills was walking around and appeared pretty happy with life.  Sure he had ice on his leg but there were no crutches or constant medical attention, just a calf not doing what a calf should.  Mills had been appearing on the radar as an under-priced premo, and he still might be, but it won’t be that way for at least another month.  3 points is a real shocker and he’s only mised out on top spot because of his current low ownership and therefore reduced impact on coaches for stinking it up, even though he was injured.

So by cheating a lot and forcing 4 guys in to 2 spots and with me likely already mentioning many of your top picks for this week’s Dick of the week, we now get to the man who I believe deserves this special honour more than anyone else from the weekend of fun.  Whilst Jack and Cal were injury ridden disappointments and Alex and Kade were rookies who need to do better, our winner this week played like the footy was made of broccoli and he was a 3yr old at dinner time.  Our winner this week carried 26% of coaches out there with him and did so as their D1 or 2 for the vast majority and yet played like he was a D6 in a bad team.  For scoring 72 points in a game where the ball was pinging around at a pretty decent rate and that’s normally suits him, our DT Talk Dick of the Week for week 9 is Jack Sinclair.

Jack normally cruises around the oval looking like he’s just been surprised when few of his mates rock up at the park to have a kick.  He’s panicked or been rushed during his career as often as I’ve had a sensible reaction to bad umpiring, so that’s never.  He’s as cool as the other side of the pillow and this looks great when he’s racking up +6’s, taking kick-ins and appearing at the CBA’s.  He makes point scoring look easy when he’s on.  However, in games like the weekend, when he’s looking about as interested as a teenager on their way to clean their room before borrowing Dad’s car, it’s a maddening site.  Jack on the weekend looked as keen on getting points and having an impact on the game as Calvin is keen to hear about Twitter Hero opinions about his Captains calls that don’t work out.  I’ve seen cats more interested in dogs than Jack seemed interested in the contest on the weekend.  If you owned him, that apparent disinterest would stoke the fires of a rage trade.  Jack’s now had a couple in a row of these and would be starting to worry his 25,000 or so coaches who backed the mighty mullet to fly again this year.

So, now we have the Dick of the Week for week 9, the question becomes what do you do with him?  In or out?  To me it’s pretty obvious, if you have this Dick you need to keep him.  If your team is in the sort of shape that allows you to trade up, down or sideways your Jack Sinclair for a Dawson, Doch, Stewart or other options then you’re Hat bound and don’t need any advice at all.  He’s been largely a let down this year in amongst some good stuff but I’d be highly surprised if Jack is your biggest issue.  Hold this week’s Dick and hope that the decision doesn’t get harder the longer you hold.

So that’s it for another week of good and bad Dicks who’ve helped or hurt our chase for the Hat.  Happy trading as we come to the Byes and all the best to all of you, apart from those higher up the rankings than me, which actually is pretty much all of you.

See you next week Folks.