The Thursday Scramble: Round 11

Some absolutely cracking games of footy last weekend with some simply huge scores, some of the biggest we have ever seen. But with great reward always comes a backhander from the Fantasy Gods. And in this circumstance it was the injuries to Oliver and Josh Kelly. On top of that this is our last round before we hit the byes. Could we have any more things go wrong???  Time to Scramble!

To Trade or Not to Trade Clarry…. That is the Question

Ok, so first, let me just point out my disgust at a worrying trend that has started to creep into the AFL. And that is for teams on their injury list to no longer identify how many weeks a player will be out but to say “Short Term” or “Medium Term”. Whilst it is their prerogative to do this it is incredibly infuriating to us Fantasy Coaches. The worst offender is Geelong. But we initially saw Clarry’s injury listed as “Short Term” and now it is “TBC”. This makes these kind of decisions very difficult. Noting that in the NFL, clubs are fined for providing incorrect information about injuries!

Anyway, enough of my little rant.  What are we going to do with Clarry. There are really just the two options and I am going to break down my thoughts for you because the obvious answer is not always the best one.

Trade him out. Many would say that this is simply the only answer for us here. He is listed at TBC and that seems that more than likely he will be missing 2+ weeks. If that is true then yes, we should probably be trading him out. We really don’t want to leave that many dollars and potential points on the bench for any more than a week normally. By trading him out you should be able to get out the shopping list and go to pretty much anyone you want. The one saving grace we have had in this situation is that Oliver played out the game and got a good score meaning that he didn’t lose too much money (only $9k in AFL Fantasy). Now many of you will be asking, “who is the best to go to” and as always I will say that this is a very difficult question not knowing the current composition of your sides. And obviously this is made even worse by the bye’s being upon us next week and whoever you do bring in should be aligned to your bye strategy as best it can be.

Hold him. This does seem like an odd path to take but hear me out. We don’t know how long he will be out, we know that he played out the game and we did hear that he did do some running at training on the Monday. So all of this says to me that there is every chance that it was an extremely low grade hamstring and he is every chance of missing just the one week and possibly none. We also know that he will do everything he can to get back out there and help his team. Looking at the upcoming fixture for Melbourne has them playing Fremantle this Saturday which means 8 days since the injury, this may be a bridge too far potentially with his next game being on a Friday night against Carlton. This would be a full two weeks since the injury and it is a game that they will be keen to win being on the big stage. At the absolute outside their following game (just before their bye) is against Collingwood on the King’s Birthday holiday Monday. That would be 3 weeks and 3 days following the injury. If the injury is minor as the Dees say, then I would expect him to be playing that day meaning he would just miss the 2 games. The question you need to ask yourself is “Do you have good enough bench cover to roll with for 2 weeks?”

Now some may be asking, why would we risk holding him. And in AFL Fantasy that is a great question, in that format the threshold is much lower and you can trade a bit more freely. But what it would do is potentially put you one upgrade behind others as you need to do some sideways trading. However, in Real Dreamteam and SuperCoach where we are on the limited trade format, holding does make sense if we think it is going to be very short term. You would use 1 trade to get him out but would likely need at least 2 more to get him back in again. This is a huge investment in just one player. But it is certainly a very valid play.

What am I going to do? Well I only have him in SuperCoach and at this stage I am very tempted to hold him and continue my upgrades elsewhere to hopefully come out of the byes with a better team. But the one thing nagging me in the back of  my mind is that if I hold him for one and then he is listed as not back until after their bye then that is one week of better points I won’t get back if I trade him after that first week.

Lots of decisions to make, so if we could only get some solid answers from the club medicos then we would be able to make a much more informed decision.

The Magic of Round 12

What a modern day miracle we have in round 12. Not only is it the first round of the byes when we see players from Brisbane, St Kilda, Sydney and Fremantle all missing, but we also get a number of new DPPs delivered for our pleasure. Hopefully it will bring us some great nuggets of gold and hopefully even more flexibility for our sides. The one that we all expect that is coming is for Sam Walsh to be named as a forward. However, this is probably not going to help many of us just yet due to the bye structure and that we already have pretty loaded forward lines.

I’m not going to bang on about the byes because I did that a few weeks ago. Needless to say you need to have your structure set and your plans firmly in place. We know that there will be some curve balls come out of the woodwork and it is during this period that the fewer red dots you have the better you will fare. We want to come out of the next four weeks with a much better team than we started and we don’t want to be doing too much side swapping if we can really help it.

One of the key things to remember for the byes is that players that are on the bye that week are not locked until the very last game of the round starts, so it makes your looping much easier to do.

Things to Remember

• The best laid plans can often go astray, just remember to try and use them to your advantage as best you can. If you have both Kelly and Clarry and want to trade both (Kelly is a must trade) then try and get two great players in that you were targeting anyway.
• Use the rolling 22 to your advantage and let that help you make your choices between players.
• Once you get to the byes you don’t have to wait for a rookie to max out to trade them out. Once they hit their bye it should be almost bye bye if they aren’t a keeper like Sheezel.

Really just the one big decision this week for Coaches with Clarry and I hope that I have provided you all with a bit of food for thought above. I am not saying that you definitely shouldn’t trade him out, but I just wanted you all to have as much information as was possible that I could deliver to make your choice with. Also, don’t get disheartened if your score this week isn’t as big as it was in round 10, we don’t get golden weeks like that come along too often. Good luck this week and catch you all next  Thursday as we embark on the bye period together.